


Souls on the outside

by Autistic_Assassin_Bird



Series: Heroes of the Republic of Heaven [1]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Kamen Rider Build, 快盗戦隊ルパンレンジャー VS 警察戦隊パトレンジャー | Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patoranger
Genre: Alethiometer Use, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Daemons, Dimension Travel, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2019-09-03 01:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 23,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autistic_Assassin_Bird/pseuds/Autistic_Assassin_Bird
Summary: Sento and his daemon struggle over finding out he's Katsurugi. They stumble upon a strange woman.Meanwhile, the Lupins and Patos are dealing with the effects of an odd Gangler power.A story involving aliens, cowboys, magic, universe hopping, and youkai.(Now on Wattpad at moonstreamxripefruit)





	1. The women, daemons, and names

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons introduced:
> 
> (Sento) Miyako (means "moon child in Japanese) - a black tailed jackrabbit, female (Lepus californicus)
> 
> (Takumi) Ren (means "lotus" in Japanese) - a black tailed jackrabbit, female
> 
> (Ryuga) Ai (means "indigo" in Japanese) - an Asian water monitor, female (Varanus salvator)
> 
> (Misora) Emyr (means "king" in Welsh) - an ocelot, male
> 
> (Sawa) Hakim (means "wise" in Arabic) - a striped polecat, male (Ictonyx striatus)
> 
> (Soichi) Unnr (means "loving" in Old Norse) - a caracal, becomes a slow loris when he is possessed by Evolto, female
> 
> (Kairi) Aoi (means "green, blue" in Japanese) - a thick billed raven, female (Corvus crassirostris)
> 
> (Noel) Vered (means "rose" in Hebrew) - unsettled, mostly takes a feline or snake shape, Nonbinary, she/her pronouns
> 
> (Tooma) Sayaka (means "sand, thread" in Japanese) - a Bengal tiger, female
> 
> (Umika) Sorin (means "sun" in Romanian) - a European hedgehog, male
> 
> (Tsukasa) Hayato (means "falcon person" in Japanese) - an Egyptian vulture, male
> 
> (Keiichiro) Mio (means "beautiful" in Japanese) - a german shepherd dog, female
> 
> (Sakuya) Zhi (means "ambition" in Chinese) - a spiny mouse, female (Acomys cilicicus)
> 
> (Aya) Yasu (means "peace, quiet" in Japanese) - a cheetah, male
> 
> (Shori) Miki (means "beautiful, chronicle" in Japanese) - a wedge tailed eagle, female (Aquila audax)
> 
> (Shiho) Naomi (means "straight, beautiful" in Japanese) - an emerald tree boa, female (Corallus caninus)

_It can’t be true._

It couldn’t be true that he was Katsuragi Takumi. When Soichi and Unnr had taken in him and his daemon, given them names, _Sento and Miyako_ , he’d thought it was for a good cause. He hadn’t realized that he and his daemon were being manipulated to Blood Stalk’s ends. (How had Unnr changed from a caracal to a slow loris, anyway? Everything he’d read had said that daemons couldn’t change their forms once settled.)

Soichi and his caracal daemon had been nice. They’d acted as guardians for them and Misora and Emyr.

Sento hadn’t known he was the man who’d hurt Misora and Emyr, who’d started the experiments that had hurt Ryuga and Ai. (Ai was currently lurking in a corner of the lab next to Banjou, glaring at Miyako like she wanted to bite her. Since Ai’s species of water monitor was venomous that would probably end badly if it did escalate to that point.)

Mrs.Katsuragi and her daemon had told them Takumi’s daemon was also a jackrabbit named Ren. How could he have not figured it out sooner?

Miyako leapt onto the table he was working at and settled down in between his arms. Sento could hear Emyr growling, his spotted tail swishing back and forth, ears flattened, as he talked to Misora.

“...He’s upset, Misora. We should do something.” He growled. “You know Banjou and Ai will try to stop us, Em. Let's go see Sawa and Hakim.” Misora replied, stroking her daemon’s back.

Hakim had growled at Miyako once he heard the news. The striped polecat was terrifying sometimes. He’d mauled a guy’s cat daemon when they were trying to sneak into a hospital to talk to Taizen Himuro.

Miyako’s nose twitched and she jumped down into his lap. Eventually, it got late. The others went to sleep.

“Sento, its late. You should sleep.” Miyako said. Sento petted her head for a bit. “I know, I know.” He mumbled. He got up, but instead of going to bed, he went outside and wandered outside the cafe. Miyako tugged on his coat with her teeth.

“Sento…” She whined. He sat down on a bench and scooped her up in his arms.

A woman in a rumpled dress stumbled by and sat down next to them. Sento tensed. “Where's her daemon?” Miyako asked. “I can't smell them anywhere.”

“Hey, miss? Are you okay?” Sento asked. “Where's your daemon? Is he around here somewhere?”

The woman stared at him with a confused look on her face. “What are you talking about? What's a daemon?”

..

Tooma hadn't expected the sight that greeted him when he went into the Bistro Jurer. A cheetah was lying near a table.

Kairi and Umika stared in surprise at the animal before going over and trying to shoo it away. The cheetah growled, arching its back. It looked skinny with several patches of fur falling out.

Kogure came in an hour later. The cheetah refused to leave the restaurant.

…

The Patorangers encountered the effects of the Gangler they were chasing when they came across an old man yelling at a brightly colored frog on his head. “Get off my head, frog! Shoo!”

“Hello, do you need help, sir?” Tsukasa asked.

“It's the Gangler. He shot me and several others with this energy beam and suddenly there's a whole bunch of animals around us.” The old man said.

“Don't worry, sir. We'll handle the Gangler.” Keiichiro assured him.

“Thank you. Be careful.”

They (and the Lupinrangers) dodged the beams from the Gangler until one stray beam hit Noel. Soon after, the others were also hit.

The next morning Kairi woke up with a thick billed raven perched at the end of his bed. He screamed. The raven looked just as shocked. “Kairi!” Umika yelled, knocking on his door. Kairi got up but as soon as he did, something in his chest tightened and pulled him back toward the thick billed raven. She flew up and perched on his shoulder. “Yes?” He replied.

All three of them gathered downstairs with Kogure. A bengal tiger accompanied Tooma, sitting down on the floor at his feet, and a hedgehog was curled up in Umika's arms. Kogure and Goodie both looked as confused as the rest of them.

..

Sakuya came into work with a spiny mouse cradled in the pocket of his uniform. He was surprised to see Noel, Keiichiro, and Tsukasa having the same effects from the Gangler's power as he did.

A german shepherd dog was sitting obediently next to Keiichiro as an Egyptian vulture dug his talons into Tsukasa's shoulder. A serval prowled around on the table near Noel.

“Oh hey, Sakuya. We were just trying to figure out what the Gangler did.” Tsukasa said.

..

“I’ve heard Lupin himself mention this kind of thing a couple times.” Goodie said. “They're basically your souls taking the form of animals. They're commonly called daemons.”

“We need names, ya know. Since we're probably gonna be sticking around for a bit.” The hedgehog said.

“Names?” Tooma said, raising an eyebrow.

“Aoi.” Kairi said, pointing at the raven. “I'm calling you Aoi.” The raven looked up from where she was trying to steal Kogure's watch and snorted. “Oh, the irony.”

“I’m calling you Sorin.” Umika told the hedgehog. He ran around excitedly. “Your name is...Sayaka.” Tooma told the tiger. The tiger chuffed and groomed her face with a paw.

“Wait, what about that other...daemon?” Umika asked. “Whose is it?”

Kairi shifted uncomfortably as Aoi perched on his shoulder and started preening his hair. He had a sinking feeling about who that daemon's human was. “I think they might be one of our loved ones’ daemons.”

..

“Mio.” Keiichiro said to the dog. The dog grinned in the way dogs do and nuzzled Keiichiro's hand.

“How about...Zhi? Does that sound good?” Sakuya asked the creature. The spiny mouse squeaked. “Yes. That sounds nice.”

“I'm naming you Hayato.” Tsukasa told the vulture. He turned to preen a wing. “Good.”

“How about Vered?” Noel suggested to the serval. “What does it mean?” She asked, tilting her head to the side. “It means “rose” in Hebrew.” The serval head-butted his hand and purred. “I suppose it's as good a name as any.”

..

Sento came into Nascita with the strange woman following him. Misora must have gotten up at some point after he'd left since she came running over when she saw him come in. Emyr sniffed at the woman's legs.

“Misora, tell the others we have someone who was quite likely hurt by Faust with us.” Sento said. “Okay.” Misora replied, hurrying off to wake up Banjou and Ai.

The lady sat down at a table as Banjou and Misora appeared. The three of them and their daemons sat with the strange daemonless woman. “What's your name, miss?” Sento asked.

“Oohira Aya.” The woman replied. “What's your daemon's name?” Ai asked.

“I don't know what your talking about.”

“How can you not know what a daemon is? It's your soul taking the form of an animal. Even little kids or an amnesic like him,” Misora said, pointing at Sento when she said amnesic. “know this stuff. It's the most basic common knowledge.”

Aya stared into space, trying to process what they'd just said. “I think mine might be missing.” She said.


	2. Lost and led by stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Kazumi) - Riku (means “earth” in Japanese) - hoatzin, male (Opisthocomus hoazin)
> 
> (Gentoku) - Aysu (means “moon water” in Turkish) - smoky jungle frog, female (Leptodactylus pentadactylus)
> 
> (Aoba) - Tsubasa (means “wing” in Japanese) - Rhinoceros beetle, female, real name is Kanon (means "flower, blossom" in Japanese)
> 
> (Akaba) - Ruby (means “red” in English) - Ryukyu flying fox, female, real name is Nakamura (means "middle town" in Japanese) (Pteropus dasymallus)
> 
> (Kiba) - Fiachra (means “raven” in Irish Gaelic) - lesser sooty owl, male, real name is Kaito (means "sea, ocean" in Japanese) (Tyto multipunctata)
> 
> Title is taken from the song "Human" by of Monsters and Men

The next day, Sento, Ryuga, and Sawa went out with Aya to search for her daemon. Misora and Emyr dressed up as Mii-tan and Em-tan to see if anyone had seen or heard of any non-witch daemons wandering around the area without their human.

An hour later, they came back with no luck. With Smash everywhere, there were a lot of daemons getting separated from their humans.

Then the government sent soldiers to bring them to a meeting with the Prime Minister of Touto.

Gentoku and Aysu gave Sento and Ryuga tracking devices.

“Also, has there been any reports of any lone daemons around here?” Sento asked Gentoku. “What's the daemon look like?” Aysu asked.

“A cheetah. His name is Yasu.” Aya spoke up. 

“I'm sorry, but No, I haven't seen any lost cheetah daemons lately.”

..

Shori felt Miki's feathers tickling his skin. He slowly opened his eyes to see the wedge tailed eagle staring at him.

“Where am I?” He mumbled. “Hey, Boss. He's awake!” A voice called out. Shori sat up as a man came into the room. A hoatzin followed him in. “Hello.” The man greeted him. “I’m Sawatari Kazumi and this is Riku. I’m the leader of the Houkto Three Crows.”

“Hey.” The hoatzin said.

“I’m Yano Shori and this is Miki.”

They shook hands. “Um, where are we?” Miki asked.

“We’re currently staying the night in a warehouse. We found you and your daemon injured, so we decided to help.”

After being introduced to Aoba and Tsubasa, Kiba and Fiachra, and Akaba and Ruby, Kazumi handed him a bottle. It was red and had a bird on the front. Miki perched on Shori’s shoulder to look at it.

“I don’t trust these guys. It could be another trap by the Gangler to capture us again. Right after we’ve escaped, too.”

He snorted. “I doubt it.”

“What is this?” Shori asked, turning to Kiba. “A fullbottle. That one is the phoenix fullbottle. You can use it to fight Smash or to fight enemies of Houkto.”

Shori shuddered, chills going down his spine. Miki preened her chest nervously. He’d seen the deserted streets when he’d escaped from the place Zamigo had been holding him but he hadn’t really paid any mind to it. The world Zamigo had taken him to was in a war.

“I'll join you guys. At least, until...” _Until I can find my brother, until I can get home._

Kazumi slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Alright. Let's begin training.”

..

Shiho felt Naomi curl tighter around her arm as she ran. “Are we being followed?” She asked. Shiho poked her head around the corner of the alley. “No.”

The girl and her daemon sighed in relief. They'd lost the Ganglers on their tail, at least for now.

“Are you okay?” They looked up to see two guys standing a little ways away. They looked like brothers. One had a porcupine daemon. The other had a black kite.

“We're fine.” Naomi hissed defensively. Shiho noticed a gun on one of the boy's waists. If she could get it, she could hopefully defend herself from the Gangler.

“Hey, where did you two get those guns?”

“From our employer. Why are you asking?”

“I'm on the run from a group of people who kidnapped me. I was wondering if I could get one so I can defend myself.”

Both the boys and their daemons bristled. “Nice try, but you're not -”

“Fu, Rai, I'll handle this.” A woman stepped out from the shadows, followed by a striped polecat. Fu and Rai looked at each other before bowing. “Yes, Sawa-san.”

They quickly left and Sawa turned to Shiho. “Who are you?” Naomi asked.

“I'm Takigawa Sawa and this is Hakim.”

“I’m Ichinose Shiho and this is Naomi.”

“So, about those people that kidnapped you. You said you needed something to defend yourself.” Sawa brought out a gun and two gear things from her bag. “Here.”

She placed them in Shiho's hands. “Thank you. But what about the ones those guys had -”

“I switched them out with fakes when they weren't looking.”

Sawa smiled. “C'mon, Shiho. I have some friends I want you to meet.”

..

Vered, currently in the form of a wild boar, snorted as she paced around the bedroom in the apartment Noel was renting. “I can't believe Arséne or Kogure or Goodie didn't tell us about any of this “daemon” stuff.” She growled in Occitan.

“Vered, que t'ac pregui, calme-toi.” Noel said. “I'm sure they had good reason not to tell me about any of it.”

Vered glared, shifting into the form of a chickadee to tug on his ear. “He practically raised us, Nöe. He _should_ have told us. He…”

Noel remembered that Arséne had a wildcat that followed him around that he'd called “Marie”. (Marie was his daemon, they both realized.) Marie had never been too far away from him. Whenever Noel had asked about the cat, Arséne had told him that she was just a pet cat that he'd adopted from one of his heists.

Vered turned into a serval and curled up on his lap as he sat down on the bed. “Maybe Père didn't want us knowing about all this because it could cause even more trouble?

Noel rolled his eyes. “Trouble? Yeah, sure. As if I already didn't have enough. He knew about this, yet he didn't tell me.”

..

_“Garcon, tu vas bien?” The boy looked up at the man staring at him. “Non.” He answered. The man came over to him, a wildcat trailing at his feet._

_“Why are you alone? It's cold out here. Shouldn't you be with your parents?”_

_“My parents were attacked by other people while at home. I ran away, but my family...” He swallowed back a sob, drawing his coat around himself._

_“It's okay, child. Tell me, why were your parents attacked?” The boy glanced at the man with a nervous look. “There was a monster at our house.” He said._

_The man seemed to understand what was being referred to. “I'm sorry. Do you have any relatives I can take you to?”_

_“Not nearby.”_

_“You want to stay with me for the night? It's going to get pretty cold tonight.”_

_The boy nodded. “Mercés, Mousser!”_

_The man smiled. “I'm Arséne Lupin. And you are?”_

_“Noel Takao.”_

_Arséne chuckled. The cat purred. “Oh, this is Marie.” He picked up the seven year old boy. “C'mon, let's get somewhere warm.”_

_Kogure had been less than pleased to find that his employer had taken in a child._

_He'd met Goodie as well. Noel had addressed him in French and Occitan, at first. Arséne had asked Noel about his family, where his relatives lived, and other stuff and Noel had done his best to answer._

_After not being able to find any of his relatives, Arséne had offered to adopt him._

_Seven years later, the Gangler had attacked. Arséne had told him to go hide in his room and had given him three things, Good Striker, the X changer, and a knife. Noel had followed his order, locked the door to his room, drew the curtains closed, and hid under his bed._

_The sound of his door being broken down and strange voices made him even more scared. A Gangler grabbed him and dragged him out. Noel shrieked and had tried to get away, but in a fight between a Gangler and a short, scrawny fourteen year old, it quickly became obvious that the Gangler was going to win._

_Dograno Yabun had killed his father. Marie was nowhere to be found. Noel had ran toward him. “Père, paire!” He cried. Soon, sadness turned to anger and he'd thrown curses at the Gangler in Occitan and French._

_Yabun chuckled like he found it amusing that a crying, injured teenager was screaming at him._

“Hey, Goodie, do you still have that knife Arséne gave me?” Noel asked.

“Yeah, course I do.”

“I think I'm going to need it soon.”


	3. The window

Goodie slashed at the monster. Nothing happened.

“Goodie, what the hell did you do?” Mio snarled.

“Nothing! All I did was slash at the monster with the knife.”

A creature ran past them in a blur of tan and black and disappeared into the air. Keiichiro moved slightly and squinted. “Is that...another city?”

The Gangler seemed just as surprised as the two teams were. “What the…”

The Gangler escaped while they were distracted. Suddenly, Lupin Blue and his tiger daemon ran over, disappearing into the window. Lupin Red and Yellow looked at each other like they were unsure whether to follow their teammate or not.

Lupin Red's raven cawed and pulled on his ear. The Lupinranger glared at his daemon. The two Lupinrangers ran after Lupin Blue.

“Should we go after them?” Hayato asked. “I think we should.” Vered replied. “No one asked you, Ve.” Noel grumbled.

The Patorangers jumped through the window. They followed the tracks of the Lupinrangers and jumped through another window. They were still in Japan, judging by the architecture.

“Freeze!”

..

Yasu sniffed the air outside the cafe. Aya was closer than he'd expected. He didn't expect to end up in Japan after going through the window between worlds.

He heard the humans inside and their daemons racing to open the door. A guy opened the door, his black tailed jackrabbit daemon eyeing Yasu warily.

The man turned around. “Aya, I think your daemon just showed up.” He yelled.

Aya came running out and hugged him. “Yasu!” She said happily. “I was beginning to worry we'd be separated forever.”


	4. Stolen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Arsène) Marie (the French form of Mary) - a Scottish wildcat, female (Felis silvestris grampia)

_“Someday, you're going to change the world, Takumi.”_

_Takumi looked at the other boy through the glass. The other boy's daemon was switching rapidly, currently in the form of a greater kudu, as tests were run on them._

_Ren turned into a pigeon and landed on his shoulder. “But what if I don't want to be like you?”_

_His father's blue tongued skink daemon, Akemi, stuck out her tongue. “That's enough testing for today.” His dad told the people in the room._

..

Ryuga punched the Smash, Ai throwing the mutated eagle daemon up into the air. **_Ready go, draconic finish!_ **Ai turned into a Chinese dragon as Ryuga kicked the Smash, sending it flying.

The Smash turned back into a human.

..

Tooma ran through the alleyway, Sayaka following the cheetah daemon's scent. His transformation had cancelled the moment he'd entered the window.

A hissing noise made him stop. “Stop right there, sir.” A striped polecat was sitting in the alley, glaring. Suddenly, someone grabbed his VS changer and ran off, the polecat following them.

..

Sawa frowned as she examined the odd gun she'd stolen from the man in blue and his tiger daemon. “Do you think Nanba will promote us, Sawa?” Hakim asked, climbing onto her shoulder.

She smirked. “He'll have to. I just wish I knew why he wants this thing.”


	5. Meetings

Noel stared at the robots pointing guns at them. Vered shifted into an Irish draught horse and snorted at the robots. They were outnumbered.

A storm of bullets destroyed the robots. A person in black and orange armor and a black tailed jackrabbit with wings approached them. The person's transformation cancelled, revealing a man in a trenchcoat, jeans, and a striped shirt. The jackrabbit daemon's wings disappeared in a burst of light.

“Hello, I'm Kiryu Sento and this is my daemon, Miyako.” The man greeted them. “What are you all doing out? This area is under an evacuation notice by the Touto government because of Smash attacks.”

Keiichiro straightened up. Mio glared warily, growling quietly under her breath. “I'm Officer Akasa Keiichiro and this is my daemon, Mio. My teammates are Myoujin Tsukasa and Hayato, Hikawa Sakuya and Zhi, and Takao Noel and Vered.”

Vered shifted into a cobra and wrapped herself around Noel's shoulder.

“This is terrible.” Miyako said. “Uh, I think we should go somewhere else.”

Sento brought the Patorangers to Nascita.

“I’m home.” Sento called. “Where's Ryuga and Ai?”

“They're still out fighting Smash.” Misora replied. She stopped and stared at the cops in confusion. “Why are there cops here?” Emyr asked.

“We saved them from getting killed by Guardians while we were protecting civilians.” Miyako explained.

After introducing themselves to Misora, Aya, and Sawa, they decided to stay for a bit.


	6. Inventions

“What are you doing in here?” Noel and Vered jumped and turned to see Misora and Emyr.

“Oh, I was just curious about what was down here.” Noel answered. Misora didn't look impressed.

“Sento is gonna be mad you messed with his inventions.”

“Is he a scientist?” Vered asked. “He's an experimental theologian.” Emyr replied, cleaning his face with a paw. Vered shifted into a serval and swiped at Emyr's tail.

“Hey, watch it!” Emyr growled. Vered purred and swiped at his tail again. The two daemons quickly ended up in a fight.

“So, Sento creates stuff, as well?” Noel asked.

Misora nodded. “Mm-hm. He made the Build driver, the fullbottle purifying machine, the RabbitTank Sparkling can, and the Cross-z dragon that Ryuga uses. He's currently working on something called a “Sclash driver” for Ryuga, as well. Aya keeps pestering him about making her a build driver.”

Noel laughed. “That's pretty cool. I created the VS changers and trigger machines my teammates use.”

“Really?” Misora grinned. “That's so cool.”

Sento arrived and soon, Noel and Sento got into a conversation about inventions and engineering.

Sento pointed at the knife Good Striker had. “Is that Æsahættr?”

Noel froze, staring at the knife. “The what?”

Sento grinned. “The subtle knife. It has the power to cut portals between worlds. I heard the Brytish scholar, Lyra Silvertongue and her daemon, Pantolaimon, and her friend Will Parry and his daemon, Kirjava, used it to kill The Authority and his lieutenant, Metatron, when they were kids.”

Sento went and grabbed something off his desk. He came over and handed it to Noel.

It was a golden compass with three hands and a series of 36 symbols around the edge. “What's this, Sento?” 

“It's an alethiometer. It tells the truth. Only six were ever made. Whether this one is a very good replica or the real thing, we don't know.” Miyako explained. “It's supposed to answer any questions you ask it, but so far, this one only answers “yes or no”. It might be broken.” 

The jackrabbit daemon sneezed and flopped down on her side.

Vered chirupped, ears perking forward as she climbed onto Noel's shoulders to get a better look at the device. Sento went over to his computer.

“I think I saw Arsène use something like that somewhere before…” Good Striker mumbled in French.

..

Shori was scoping out a warehouse for fullbottles when he spotted a strange person. A man dressed in red with a thick billed raven daemon.

“Hey!” He called. “What are you doing here?” He turned into his Smash form. Miki instantly was set ablaze by the transformation.

The raven daemon flew out of the way, dodging Miki's lunging dive toward her.

Shori couldn't help feeling that there was something familiar about the guy's face. The guy shot at him with a strange gun. A girl in yellow with a hedgehog daemon appeared and struck him from behind.

Shori fired an energy beam from his arm at her.

“You’re not getting the fullbottles!” Miki screeched. She dove at the raven, catching it in her talons. The smaller bird daemon shrieked and tried to free herself.

Just then, the other Three Crows arrived. “Yano, Miki, c'mon! The boss told us we're fighting Build.” Aoba called.

Shori ran off after Aoba, Miki flying higher into the air.

“Kairi, are you okay?” Umika asked.

Kairi turned to face her, Aoi landing on his shoulder. “I...I think that was my brother.”

 **_Funky shot!_ **Something slammed into them, throwing both him and Umika against a wall. A person in a black suit with white gears on it was the last thing he saw before passing out.


	7. Friends

Hayato perched on Tsukasa's shoulder. Sento had been called about soldiers from Houkto stealing fullbottles and had rushed out to help. (Tsukasa suspected it was probably about Ryuga). Aya and Yasu had given them a quick run down about the Skywall, the three nations, and the civil war. Tsukasa and Keiichiro had offered to come as backup.

“I don't like this.” Hayato grumbled. “Something's probably going to go wrong.”

“I'm pretty sure we can handle it, Hayato.” She said. The vulture flew into the air.

“I see people up ahead that look like soldiers!” Hayato called.

“Got it.”

Sento and Miyako raced ahead. He put the Build driver on. **_Rabbit Tank sparkling!_ ** He cranked the lever on his belt until a series of pipes appeared around him. “Henshin!” **_Shuwatto hajikeru! Rabbit Tank sparkling! Yay yeah!_ **

Miyako gained wings and horns in a burst of soda bubbles.

“I hope the muscle brain hasn't tried to start fighting already.”

Keiichiro and Tsukasa transformed and followed him to the warehouse. The Three Crows and Ryuga were already there.

“Ah, so you're the Kamen Rider we've been hearing about, huh?” The one with a wedge tailed eagle daemon said. He shot a laser from his arms at them.

“Why do you all look different than last time?” Ai asked.

“We're Hazard Smash, now!” Kiba said.

A battle ensued, but it became clear that the four smash were too strong for them to beat. The Three Crows and Grease escaped.

Hayato shrieked in frustration as they flew off using the helicopter bottle.

A man showed up a couple minutes later, a caracal daemon following him.

“Sento, who's that?” Keiichiro asked.

“Isurugi Soichi, Misora's father.” Sento replied, glaring at the man.

“And Blood Stalk.” Ryuga growled.

“I'll go see what he wants.” Sento told them.

..

Umika woke up in a room, Sorin held in her arms. Kairi and Tooma were nowhere to be seen.

“Kairi? Tooma?” She called. No one answered.

She heard footsteps and sat up. Umika's vision adjusted to the darkness. Something felt different about her body than before. Her memory felt like something was missing.

She stood up, Sorin scurrying onto her shoulder as someone moved from the shadows.

“Shiho?” Umika said, staring at her friend in shock.

An emerald tree boa slithered around Shiho's neck. Her friend was wearing a gray uniform with black boots and black fingerless gloves. Shiho raced over to her. “Umika!” She said. “Oh my god, I...I didn't realize that you -”

Umika hugged her friend. “I...I thought you died, Shiho.”

Shiho relaxed, her daemon wrapping herself around her arm. “Hey, aren't you going to introduce us?” The snake hissed.

“Oh, sorry. Umika, this is my daemon, Naomi.”

Umika laughed and held up her own daemon. “This is Sorin.”

She frowned. “I talked to a man called Nanba Juzubura when I came here. He...he told me he could keep me safe from the Ganglers and Zamigo, if I tested some experiments for him.”

“What kind of experiments?” Umika asked.

Shiho took a device with a white gear on it out of a pocket and picked up a purple gun. “This. The Kaiser system.”

She slid the bottle into the gun. **_Gear engine! Funky!_ ** “Jundou!” **_Engine running gear._ **Shiho was suddenly wearing a black suit with white gears on it. Naomi had longer fangs and gears in her body.

“All it took was being dosed with Nebula gas.”

“What's nebula gas? Where's Kairi and Aoi?” Sorin asked.

Naomi flicked her tongue in and out. “Is he the guy you were with?”

Umika nodded. “Yes. Yano Kairi and Yoimachi Tooma.”

“I think I saw Sawa and Utsumi bring them to another part of this facility. C'mon, I'll help you find them.” Shiho grinned. It reminded Umika of when they were young kids after Shiho helped her scare off bullies.

Umika returned the smile. “Thank you.”

She quickly followed her friend down a corridor and into another room.


	8. Roses and wood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Satoru) Marin (French form of Marinus) - a snow leopard, male

“Is the Hazard Trigger dangerous?” Sento asked, turning the hands of the alethiometer to the symbols that matched the meaning of his question. He sat still as the hands turned and stopped. _Yes._

“How is it dangerous?”

 _Yes._ He smacked the compass in frustration before placing it down on his desk. Sento ruffled his hair with a hand. “This is terrible.” He grumbled, running a hand down his face.

“Soichi mentioned it caused a loss of identity.” Miyako said, scratching her ear with a foot. “Maybe Takumi created it as a last resort in case things went wrong?”

Sento picked her up and stroked her ears. “Knowing Blood Stalk, he’s probably trying to trick me into killing myself or hurting others.”

Aya came over and placed the robot fullbottle on his desk. Sento gave her a confused look. “Where did you get this?” He asked.

“I took it from Grease when he wasn’t looking.” She replied. Aya grinned excitedly. Yasu was purring. “Since Banjou is using a Sclash driver now, can I use his old Build driver?”

Sento admired Aya’s determination to fight Houkto, but he didn’t really want Banjou using the Sclash driver. “Fine. You can use it for now.”

“Yes!” She said happily. Aya grabbed the belt before running off.

..

“It smells odd here.” Vered murmured as the two of them walked around the Lupin Estate. Noel had taken the knife and cut another hole in the worlds. He'd ended up in France, just outside the Lupin Estate.

He and Vered were looking around the treasure room where Arsène had kept Lupin Collection pieces before the Ganglers had stolen them all.

“What do you mean?” Noel asked.

His daemon, who'd decided to take the form of a maned wolf, sniffed the ground near a bookshelf. “I mean, it smells...sweet. Like roses, almost.”

Noel hadn't really paid attention to any of the smells of the room before. The most he could smell was old wood, wood polish, and a faint trace of mustiness. Vered obviously had a much better sense of smell than he did to be able to smell something like that.

“How fresh is the smell?” He asked.

“It's, at least...a couple years old, I think? It's pretty faint.” She walked over to him. Noel rubbed a finger over one of her ears and petted her neck and back.

The smell of roses reached his nose. Faint, but still noticeable. It almost made him want to gag.

Vered shifted into a small green lizard with spots and skittered over to a wall. “I think there's something behind here.”

Noel came over. The scent grew stronger. “Yeah, you might be right.”

His daemon changed into a fennec fox. Her ears swiveled backwards, toward the direction of the room's door. “Noel, I think someone's coming. I hear footsteps.” She growled.

He raced to hide inside a wardrobe with his daemon, just managing to shut the door as someone entered.

He looked through a small crack to see a man. He felt like he'd encountered him somewhere before. Then he remembered how Tsukasa and Keiichiro had told him about their old teammate, Satoru Shinonome. It was him. A snow leopard followed him, sitting down near his feet.

“Someone else has been in here, Satoru.” The snow leopard growled, sniffing the air. His voice was deep and had a slight hint of a Normandy accent.

“I doubt it, Marin. This place is under high security. Has been for the past week. No one would be able to sneak past the officers guarding the rooms.” Satoru assured his daemon.

The snow leopard's ears flattened and his tail twitched as he stalked around the room, sniffing.

“I see you've arrived early, Officer Shinonome.” A much deeper voice said.

Noel couldn't see the other person through the crack in the wardrobe but he smelled something that reminded him of blood and (for some reason he couldn't place) dead snakes. Vered changed into a kangaroo rat and buried herself in the pocket of his jacket. 

“You said you found something that might interest me.”

Satoru reached into a coat pocket and removed an evidence bag with a necklace in it. It was reddish gold with green stones inlaid in it. He threw it at the other person. A slow loris raced over and picked it up.

“This is indeed interesting.” The person said. “I'll be leaving now. Give my regards to your friends."

The other person left.

Satoru turned to Marin. “You said there was someone else here. Where?”

The snow leopard sneezed. “One thing at a time, Satoru.” He chuffed. “I think it was over near the wardrobe.”

Vered climbed out of his jacket and onto his shoulder, shifting into a fruit bat as Noel bust out of the wardrobe.

“What the hell?” Satoru backed up as Noel got to his feet.

Noel grabbed Vered and the knife and hopped back through the window and into Sento's world.


	9. Don't cover yourself in thistles and weeds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the song "Thistles and weeds" by Mumford and Sons. 
> 
> Terms:  
> Countries:  
> Nippon - Japan  
> Cathay - China  
> Brytain - Britain  
> Corea - Korea  
> Fireland - Iceland  
> New Denmark - The east coast of the U.S
> 
> Anbaric/anbaricy - electric/electricity  
> Coal-silk - nylon

Noel grabbed the alethiometer off of Sento's desk after Sento and the Patorangers left.

He heard footsteps above him. The cafe was supposed to be empty except for him. Sawa had left shortly after Sento, Ryuga, and the others had. Misora and Aya had gone out to get groceries.

Noel and Vered went upstairs. His eyes widened in surprise as he saw the people sitting at a table. “Tooma, Umika? What are you two doing here?”

Sawa stood up, Hakim jumping onto the counter. “I brought them here. Faust found them and kidnapped them. Nanba dosed them with nebula gas. Probably thought he could turn them into soldiers.” She told him.

Noel shook his head. ”Okay…” He didn't trust Sawa. Misora had told him she was a spy for Nanba industries. Trusting a spy was risky.

He went over to Tooma and Umika. Sayaka and Sorin went over to greet Vered. Vered turned into a foosa.

“I'm glad to see you guys are okay.” He said.

“Us too.” Umika replied. “Sawa and Shiho helped us escape.”

“Sawa said Aya was here.” Tooma added. Noel understood that Tooma and Umika were probably reeling from seeing their loved ones alive. Tooma looked calm, but Sayaka's nervous tail twitching and sniffing the air gave them away. He wanted to see his fiancee.

“She is. She's gone out right now. She's helping Misora.” Noel said.

Vered jumped into Noel's lap. “Where's Kairi and Aoi?” She asked.

Umika shrugged. “We don't know. Sawa and Shiho don't know either. Sawa said she thinks that Kairi's brother might be working for Houkto, so maybe he went to look for him. We do know that Kairi was also dosed with nebula gas but he escaped before either of us did.”

Noel ran a hand down his face. “That's sort of a relief. At least he's not dead.”

Misora, Emyr, Aya, and Yasu came back with groceries. Sawa introduced her to Tooma and Umika. The two of them had questions which Sawa and Misora did their best to answer.

Aya sat down with Tooma and the two of them started catching up with the other. Their daemons curled up together.

Noel and Umika helped Sawa put up the groceries, their daemons chatting with each other. Sawa and Hakim were rather interested in hearing about Umika and Tooma being phantom thieves.

“I can help you guys learn a few moves to take down Ganglers easier.” Sawa suggested.

“That sounds awesome.” Umika replied.

Sento came into the cafe with Ryuga, Keiichiro, Sakuya, and Tsukasa. Everyone was injured and upset.

Misora came over and helped Sento into the lab.

Everything afterwards was a whirlwind as everyone tried to explain what had happened, Ryuga and Ai were introduced to Umika, Sorin, Tooma, and Sayaka.

Apparently, Sento had tried to use the Hazard trigger to stop Ryuga from getting beaten up by the Houkto Three Crows. Sento and Miyako had gone berserk and had killed one of the Three Crows (Aoba and Tsubasa) and had also attempted to kill Sakuya and Zhi.

..

 **_Uncontrolled switch, black hazard! Oh, no!_ ** _As Sento's transformation finished, Miyako changed, her body becoming a seemingly cloudy mass of darkness that looked sort of like a hare._

_As Sento and Miyako tried to control Ryuga and Ai, the Patorangers were fighting the Three Crows and Grease._

_Sento froze, his body going stiff._

_“Sento? Miyako? Are you alri -” Before Ryuga could finish the question, Sento charged._

**_Max hazard on! Ready, go! Hazard finish! Oh, no!_ ** _He kicked Ryuga, knocking him out of his transformation._

_He turned toward Aoba and kicked him out of the warehouse. Aoba tried to punch him, but Sento dodged, and cranked the lever on his driver._

_Miyako grabbed Tsubasa out of the air, holding the stag beetle in her mouth._ **_Ready, go! Hazard finish!_ ** _Miyako bit down as Sento kicked Aoba._

_Grease screamed, the other Three Crows, the Patorangers, and Ryuga staring in horror as Aoba fell on the ground, Tsubasa turning to Dust._

_Sento turned to Sakuya and charged at him, picking up the man by the throat. Zhi shrieked and leapt on Miyako's back, angrily biting the jackrabbit. Tsukasa and Keiichiro tried to pull Sento away from their teammate but he knocked them away._

_Grease and one of the other Three Crows, Shori, punched him. Sento let go of Sakuya, throwing him against a wall. Miyako fling Zhi off as Shori's wedge tailed eagle grabbed her._

_Grease punched Sento out of his transformation, his hoatzin daemon lifting Miyako off the ground then slamming her back down against the concrete repeatedly._

_As Grease and Shori ran over to Aoba, Sento cast a confused look in Ryuga and Ai's direction._

..

Misora helped Sento down the stairs, Emyr gently carrying Miyako by her scruff before setting the jackrabbit down on the bed. Sento immediately picked up his daemon in his arms and cradled her against his chest.

“Sento…” Misora said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Sento flinched.

“What happened?” Emyr asked.

“I...I killed someone.” Sento choked out. “I would have preferred it if Blood Stalk really had tried to kill me instead.”

Misora gripped his shoulder. She could sense he was injured. The physical injuries, those could be healed quickly. The emotional scars, on the other hand…

“Sento, this is a war. People die all the time -”

“I know that!” He spat. He laid down on the bed. “Please, leave me alone for a little bit, Misora.”

..

Vered snuck down into the lab with Noel a couple hours later.

Umika and Tooma had decided to stay in Sawa's apartment with her. They'd left an hour ago.

Sento hadn't come out of the lab in a while and, despite not really knowing him, Noel was starting to worry about Sento and Miyako.

“It smells like the treasure room in the Lupin Estate did.” Vered said, sniffing the air. She'd changed into a rat and was sitting on Noel's shoulder.

Noel noticed the smell too. “Roses.” He mumbled. It seemed to fill the entire room, but was especially strong near where Misora and Emyr usually slept. Sento and Miyako were there now.

He noticed a small light shining from the lab and noticed Misora sitting at Sento's desk, looking at his computer.

“What are you looking at on there?” She flinched and turned to look at him. “Sorry.” He apologized.

“I was just browsing geographic articles on countries of the world.” Misora answered. “I always wanted to travel when I was little. Fancied myself an explorer. Now, with the Nipponese civil war and the Skywall making travel between even the three parts of Nippon impossible…”

Noel pulled up a chair and sat down. “You fear you won't be able to travel.” He finished. “I feel you. I've always wanted to travel to other places too. What places do you really want to visit, Misora?”

The girl grinned excitedly. Emyr raised his head, his ears pricking forward. “I've always wanted to go to Brytain and see Oxford and Jordan college and possibly meet Lyra Silvertongue and Pantalaimon. Fireland with its volcanoes and fire mines seems interesting or perhaps Svalbard and the kingdom of the Panserbjørne. Or Lapland and the kingdom of the witches. Or New Denmark or Texas or France. Or Cathay. I've heard Cathay has a lot of good tea, even better than the stuff in Nippon or Corea. I could bring a mini projecting lantern and take photograms of famous places and landmarks.”

Noel chuckled. “That sounds very nice. Maybe I could take you on a trip using my X trains. I've used them to cross from France to Ja - I mean, Nippon, before. I could even take Sento and Ryuga and Sawa, if they wanted to come.”

Misora grinned happily. “That sounds amazing.”

The smell of roses wafted to his nose again. It seemed to be coming from the bracelet Misora was wearing.

“Where did you get that bracelet?” He asked.

Misora picked at her wrist. “It was part of a series of artifacts my dad brought back from an expedition to Mars. The Pandora Box was also one of those artifacts.”

She typed words into the search bar on the computer and pulled up an article. “These are the other artifacts.”

Noel scrolled down and stopped. On the screen was a picture of the necklace Satoru had given to the mysterious person.

He got up and grabbed the knife from where he'd hidden it earlier. Misora came over to him.

“Are you going back to your world?” She asked.

“Yes.” Vered answered.

Emyr stretched out and yawned. “Can we come with you? We want to see what it's like there.” 

“Fine.”

Noel cut a hole in the world, jumping into it and finding himself outside the Bistro Jurer.

Misora came through shortly after, holding Emyr in her arms. She set the ocelot on the ground.

They snuck into Jurer.

..

Kairi stumbled around, slumping against the wall of a warehouse.

Aoi landed on his shoulder, cawing in annoyance. “C'mon, Kairi. Get up! We need to keep moving!”

His body felt stronger than it had before but he'd been wandering for hours. He'd been unable to find a window to escape through or any of his teammates. “I'm trying, Aoi.” He got to his feet.

“Hey, you need help?” Kairi turned to see a man wearing a yellow jacket, cargo pants, and a yellow beanie standing a few feet away.

“Uh, yeah.” Kairi said.

The other man's daemon, a grayish sooty owl, landed on his hand. Kairi noticed that the other man wore a glove that looked to be some kind of falconer's glove on one hand.

The other man came over and helped him stand up. “I'm Shoukichi, but you can call me Kiba. This is Kaito, but you can call him Fiachra.”

“I'm Kairi. This is Aoi.”

Kiba grinned. “C'mon, Kairi, I'll introduce you to my boss.”

Shori had not expected to see his brother accompining Kiba back to base, much less in this world at all. His little brother had a daemon, a thick billed raven. He was dressed like he’d escaped a Faust lab. It wasn't hard to put two and two together; he was the man in the red suit.

Shori went and fetched a couple bandages out of the coal-silk bag that Kiba kept for when one of them were injured. He had a lot to talk about with his brother later. 

..

Satoru came into Nascita, much to Keiichiro's surprise. Tsukasa was off helping Ryuga with securing fullbottles, Sakuya had gone off to help any refugees around the area, Aya was currently training with Sawa, Shiho, Umika, and Tooma, and Noel and Misora were...somewhere. Keiichiro had offered to stay at the cafe and make sure Sento was okay.

(Keiichiro already knew that Tooma and Umika were the Lupinrangers. They had the same daemons, same voices, and same appearances. Seeing them at Nascita had only confirmed his and Tsukasa's suspicions, but they couldn't exactly arrest them while in Sento's world. He just needed to wait to find Kairi and get the three back to their own world, first.)

“Satoru? What're you doing here?” Keiichiro asked.

“I just came to say hi.” Satoru said, smiling. Satoru introduced Marin to the two of them and he and Keiichiro made small talk for a while.

Mio sniffed the snow leopard accompanying Satoru. The dog growled, ears flattening and trotted over to him, laying her head on his lap.

“Something's off about him. His daemon feels weird, too. Just something about him…” She whispered.

“Is there something important you wanted to talk about?” Keiichiro asked.

His friend's mouth twitched down into a frown. “I found out something about your...friends, Noel, Ryuga, and Misora. Ryuga and Misora might be Ganglers and Noel is possibly a Gangler spy.”


	10. Kogure explains some things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Kogure) Annick (Breton nickname for Anna) - a European harvest mouse, female

"Kogure, we need you to explain some things about my dad. Why did he know about daemons and not tell me? What's the alethiometer and how and why did he have one? Where is he from? Do you have a daemon too?" 

Kogure held up a hand, cutting Noel off. 

"I'll answer you, Noel." He said. "But, why is she here?" He asked, referring to Misora. 

"I was bored and wanted to come here with him." Misora replied. 

"Yes, I have a daemon." He brought a harvest mouse out of his suit pocket. "This is Annick." 

The mouse went over to Vered and sniffed noses with her before doing the same with Emyr. 

"Will you please just explain already?" Vered hissed in irritation, taking the form of a serval. (She seemed to favor small animals.)

"Alright, alright." 

_Arsène had been born in France to the Fôret de Rambouillet clan of witches in France, sometime around 1794. He had the naturally long life that witches usually have._

_He eventually grew bored with witch society and became a thief and an amuteur scholar. He was somewhat vocal of the Magisterium, but only when talking to witches or non Christains._

_Arsène had joined Oakley Street shortly after he finished transitioning, around 1933. An agent had come to France and Arsène had eavesdropped on a conversation. Sometime later, he'd identified the leader and had offered to join the agency._

_Arsène had found out about angels while helping a young man by the name of Lord Asriel and his snow leopard daemon, Stelmaria, on an expedition in the North._

"He met Lord Asriel?" Emyr said, purring in excitement. Misora grinned. 

"Yes." Annick replied. 

"Who's Lord Asriel?" Noel asked. 

"He's Lyra Silvertongue's father and was also an experimental theologian and an explorer. He created the Republic of Heaven after defeating Metatron." Misora explained. 

_Arsène had developed an interest in dust. Not_ _ordinary dust, but Dust with a capital D, something special that not many could see, at least without special equipment, such as a projecting lantern with a special filter on the lens. He'd discovered something odd while on that expedition; some people, like him and Asriel and Kogure, could see Dust without that special equipment, though it took a large amount of concentration to do so. It usually could only be seen clearly in the corner of one's eye or on a photogram._

_Being a (former) witch, Arsène naturally had a longer life than most humans in his world. He'd found out about fallen angels and how some had possibly procreated with humans and witches of other worlds, mainly Lyra and Will's worlds. If those legends were indeed true, that would explain being able to see Dust._

_He'd travelled through universes, gathering artifacts that were said to have large amounts of Dust._

_After meeting Balthamos and Baruch, they'd told him about Back Worlders, how Ganglers had driven them out of the Land of the Dead and eaten every man made object in that world that attracted Dust._

_Following Lyra and Will into the Land of the Dead was where he'd discovered the Ganglers. A couple pordermen had almost killed an angel and a few harpies trying to lead the souls of the Dead out of the void. Arsène had watched, interested, as a harpy had ordered a few of her fellows to mob the pordermen._

_Arsène had followed Will into his world and stole the subtle knife. He and Marie had worked long and hard to put it back together. Once it was fixed, he used it to cross over to his own world now and again, to stave off world sickness._

_Unfortunately, the Ganglers followed._

_Then, he'd ended up adopting Noel._

_Kogure and Annick had been upset. Surely, he'd already dealt with enough kids after helping Malcolm, Alice, Will, and Lyra?_

..

_“Can I pet your cat?”_

_Arsène stared at the small boy, still somewhat worryingly thin, despite living with him for a month now. Marie got up from where she was lying at his feet and jumped into his lap._

_“No, you cannot pet Marie. She doesn't like being touched by anyone except me.” Arsène answered._

_Noel pouted. Arsène had noted before that the child had a fondness for cats and snakes._

_Seeing people without visible daemons was always jarring, no matter how long Arsène had lived in this world. Seeing children without visible daemons, especially so. He couldn't help pitying the boy sometimes, not being able to touch or talk to his own daemon._

_Later that night, he took out the alethiometer and asked it a question._

_“You should tell Noel the truth about you and Kogure, Arsène.” Marie said, jumping onto his desk and sniffing the box he kept the alethiometer in._

_Arsène ignored her and concentrated on the device's answer instead. He wrote down the symbols and the interpretation of the answer in his journal._

_“Arsène…” His daemon growled, swiping at his hand with a paw, her ears flattening as she glared at him._

_When he still didn't acknowledge her, Marie leapt off the desk. “If you won't tell the boy the truth about us and the Ganglers, I'll do it myself.”_

_Arsène stood up from his chair. “Marie, don't.” He said._

_The wildcat stopped and turned to face him, her back arched, brown tabby fur standing on end, and black ringed tail puffed up._

_Arsène crouched down, petting his daemon. “Noel is too young. What good would it do getting a child into my research? You know what happened with Malcolm and Asta. I don't want either the Ganglers, or worse, the Magisterium, getting their hands on another person descended from the Back Worlders.”_

_Marie snarled. “So? We both know that children are smarter than we give them credit for. I'm surprised he hasn't asked you or Kogure about why you stay in your room all night!”_

_Arsène frowned and put the alethiometer up. The wildcat continued glaring until he'd finished._

_“How do you even know that Noel has Back Worlder ancestry? Unlike Malcolm, Lyra, Asriel, Kogure, us, he doesn't show any signs of being from there. He can't even see other people's souls or Dust like we can! For all we know, he's a normal human from this world like Will is.”_

_“Noel doesn't deserve to be involved in any of our research. If he is from the Back World, he could be in danger. The Ganglers could kill him or experiment on him.” Arsène said._

_“You should at least tell him about you being a witch once, Arsène. I'm certain he'll understand you being trans.” She said, her tone less aggressive than before._

_Arsène nodded. “I'll tell him about that soon. But, I am not telling Noel about Oakley Street, Lord Asriel, or anything else.” _

"What happened to the alethiometer Arsène had?" Noel asked. 

Kogure shrugged. "I don't know. Perhaps the Ganglers took it and his journals when they killed him?" 


	11. Dog days are over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Dogs days are over" by Florence and the Machine.

Sento stared blankly at the evidence that Tsukasa had shown him. Miyako's ears flattened as she started gritting her front teeth together while glaring at Marin.

“This is...this isn't...true.” He said, standing up. “I've been living with Misora for two years, since February 2017. If she wasn't human, I'd have picked up on it. I managed to find out that Soichi was Blood Stalk. There's no evidence that either Misora or Ryuga aren't human.”

“I'm afraid that it might be true, Kiryu-san.” Satoru replied.

Sento grabbed the officer by the collar of his shirt. “Listen here, officer!” He snapped. “Misora is _not_ a monster. She's _not_ evil. She's _not_ a spy. She's the closest thing I have to family right now, and I don't want to lose her.” He let go of Satoru, turning away and going to sit back near the bed.

“Fine. But when they betray you, don't come running to me for help.” Satoru replied.

..

Noel sat on the rooftop of a building, the rain soaking through his jacket and shirt. It felt like the wetness would work its way down into his bones. Vered laid next to him in the form of an Iberian lynx. Satoru had accused them (well, actually just him, Ryuga, Ai, and Vered, not Misora or Emyr) of being a Gangler spy. Vered had growled at him.

She growled, ears flattening. “That Satoru bastard thinks you're a Gangler.”

Noel scratched her chin. “Ganglers don't have daemons...I think.”

According to Kogure, both he and Arsène weren't human either but they still had daemons. (But Kogure was from a different world and Arsène Lupin was a former witch from Lyra's world, a world where people's souls were outside their bodies instead of inside like in the Patorangers’ and Lupinrangers’ world.) 

The alethiometer, daemons, Back Worlders, fallen angels, witches...What more had Arséne kept hidden from him?

Noel moved to sit next to the radiator. Goodie appeared. “Bonjour.” The robot greeted. “Go away.” He spat in Occitan.

“Well, that's really rude.”

“Je suis désolé, Good striker. I'm just...upset.” 

Vered shifted into a serval and head-butted his side until Noel petted her. “At least you don't believe him, Ve.” He mumbled in French. 

Did the others believe he was a Gangler? That simply wasn't true. Why would he be a part of a group that had murdered his adopted father?

Noel was shaking, though whether it was from being soaking wet or whether it was from anger or sadness, he couldn't tell. Satoru had to have lied. Something had seemed off about the man and his daemon.

Goodie left. Noel took out the alethiometer and asked it a question. _Did Satoru lie about Misora and Ryuga not being human?_

The long needle moved before settling on an answer. His face fell as the answer showed up. _Yes and No._ He angrily threw the alethiometer at a wall. Vered climbed into his lap and licked his face. “Its okay.” She mumbled.

“Noel?” He looked up to see Misora and Emyr.

“Misora, what are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you.” Misora replied, sitting next to him. “I don't believe Satoru. There's no evidence to suggest you're a spy.”

Noel noticed that she didn't say anything about her or Ryuga being Ganglers, or at least, not human.

Emyr picked up the alethiometer and gave it to Misora before sitting next to Vered. “Yes and No.” She read. “What did you ask it?”

Vered answered for him. “A friend of Keiichiro and Tsukasa, Satoru Shinonome, told the Patorangers and Lupinrangers that you and Ryuga aren't human.”

Misora didn't even seem fazed. “At this point, we're pretty much ready to believe anything.” Emyr said. Vered playfully batted at the ocelot's tail.

“But my Dad kept that fact from me. He lied a lot when he was alive. I don't even know if I can even trust him anymore.”

“My dad lied to me, too. He took in me and Sento and Ryuga, simply so he could run experiments for Faust.” Misora said, rubbing the area around her bracelet.

Noel had already lost two families, and now, he felt like he was losing a third. (The others did not feel the way he did, he knew that. Noel had always been clingy toward others.)

“You see the others in Nascita as siblings, don't you?” Noel asked.

Misora bit her lower lip, staring thoughtfully at her shoes. “Yes, I do.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Do you feel that way with your coworkers?”

“Sort of. They're my coworkers, after all.”

Vered stopped trying to catch Emyr's tail and shifted into an otter to run around in the rain. “I think this alethiometer is a fake.” She said. The otter daemon turned to Emyr. “Alethiometers are supposed to give more than just “yes or no” answers, right?”

“Yeah, I guess…”

“It's a fake.” Noel said. “Maybe, we should find a real one.”

He stood up, Vered turning into a pika and racing up onto his shoulder. He turned to Misora. “Where's Banjou?”

Misora shrugged. “I don't know. I think he left after Satoru accused him of being a Gangler. I didn't see him when I went looking for you. Maybe Sento is searching for him?”

“We need to go look for him.”

..

Kairi stared at the woman wandering around the streets. She looked northern European, with dark hair, possibly dyed, judging by her blond roots. She was pretty, for a middle aged woman. A golden monkey followed her. Both the woman and her daemon looked out of place for the area, too rich and too important to be war refugees. She smelled of rich person perfume.

Aoi landed on his shoulder. He tensed as the lady went up to him.

“Excuse me, sir,” She said. Her accent sounded like an upper crust English accent, like someone of importance. “I'm looking for someone named Banjou Ryuga.”

Kairi frowned. “I don't know who that is, Miss. Are you lost or something?”

“Oh,” She seemed to realize then that she was talking to a former delinquent. “Yes. If you could help me look for him, that would be very helpful.”

Something felt off about the woman and her golden monkey, but Kairi went along anyway.

“I think this woman is carrying something important in her bag.” Aoi whispered.

“If Sayaka and Tooma were here, we'd be able to tell if it was something from the Lupin Collection.” Kairi said.

Aoi made an irritated croak and grabbed the woman's purse in her talons, tearing the strap. The golden monkey leapt, tearing feathers from her wing. Kairi grabbed the monkey and threw it on the ground before scooping up the purse and running off.

He ran, ducking into a warehouse. A figure ran in soon after. A man with brown hair and an asian water monitor daemon.

“Who are you?” Kairi asked.

“Banjou Ryuga. This is Ai. You?”

“Yano Kairi and this is Aoi.”

Aoi flew around the area then arrived back a couple minutes later. “Looks like we lost that woman.” She reported.

Kairi nodded. He turned to Ryuga. “What're you hiding here for?”

“I'm being chased by a damn cop. Heard over her earpiece someone talking about me and one of my friends “not being human” or whatever.” Ryuga snorted, punching a pillar. Ai circled around him, hissing.

Kairi noticed a belt around the other man's waist. “Wait a minute. Are you a Kamen Rider?”

Ryuga froze before getting into a fighting position, hands raised like he was going to punch someone. “Yeah.” He answered. “Judging by your jacket, I assume you're a part of the Houkto Three Crows.”

“Technically, I'm not since I can't really fight.” Kairi replied, stroking one of Aoi's wings. “Hey, we should probably look for your friend. You know, make sure they're okay.”

Ryuga relaxed and nodded. “You're right.”

The two of them snuck out of the warehouse, checking to make sure no one was following them. They ran through alleyways until they reached a place behind an abandoned apartment complex.

“Banjou!” A woman with an ocelot came over and hugged Ryuga.

“Misora, what the heck?” He gently pushed her off.

Noel came over as Misora introduced herself to Kairi.

“Can someone please tell us what's going on here?” Kairi asked. Noel explained about Satoru and how he'd accused Noel of being a spy and Misora and Ryuga of being Ganglers. 

“So that's why Tsukasa attacked us!” Ai hissed, flicking her tongue in and out.

Noel explained his plan. They were going to leave Nippon for a while.

“Where are we going first?” Ryuga asked.

Noel shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Brytain would be a good place to start. Or France.” Misora suggested.

..

“I see you've lost the journal I gave you.”

The woman with the golden monkey glared at the old man. “I didn't know Lupin Red was there, sir.”

The man's husky dog daemon snarled and bared her teeth at the monkey.

The man took an object out of a drawer and laid it on his desk. “I did manage to get this. Three, in fact.” He said.

The woman examined it. It was a gun with a red jet plane. She pursed her lips. “Good.”

“You promised an exchange. I bring you a vs changer, you give me something in return.” The man said.

The woman grimanced. “The fullbottle and driver I was going to give you were in my bag.”


	12. I have seen what the darkness does

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the song "Meet Me in the Woods" by Lord Huron.

_Misora felt the dust under her nails as she dug them into the ground. A western dragon crouched behind her, much larger than an elephant she'd seen at the zoo once as a small child. It had long claws and teeth and horns like a cow._

_Dust and debris flew through the air as a large tower overshadowed the land. Misora closed her eyes, the bracelet around her wrist tingling painfully like an anbaric shock. The robes she wore were stained with blood and dust and dirt._

_A man stood in front of her, his face blurry and unclear. Sometimes, he's her father. Lately, he resembled Sento. Now, he looked like Ryuga. A creature with a snake like body and face with feathered wings and a fin like a shark's on its tail shrieked, the sound disorienting._

_The man said something in a language she didn't understand._

_For a brief moment, Misora saw golden Dust covering everything; everything except the tower and the box and the alien who took the man's place. The man lay on the ground, bleeding._

_Misora screamed in a voice that wasn't her own, the dragon roaring in anger._

..

Sawa grabbed the purse lying on the ground. She frowned, taking a strange bottle out of it. 

“What is that?” Umika asked.

“I don't know. I've never seen a fullbottle that looks like this before.” She put the sclash driver on.

“Sawa-san, are you sure you should be doing that? It could be dangerous.” Shiho said. Naomi hissed, curling herself around Shiho's torso.

“Where would we be in life if we didn't take dangerous chances every once in a while?” Hakim snorted, scraping a front paw on the ground.

 **_Danger!_ ** Sawa placed the bottle in the sclash driver. “Henshin!” **_Wareru! Kuwareru! Kudakechiru!_ ** A beaker filled with purple liquid formed around Sawa and Hakim before being broken by crocodile jaws. **_Crocodile in Rogue! Oraa!_ **A scream followed as crocodile jaws chomped down on her helmet, cracking the faceplate.

Umika and Shiho stared in awe. Hakim had grown longer and his fangs looked like saber teeth. Sorin and Naomi looked impressed.

“Wow.” Sorin said in awe. “I guess you won't have to use remocon bros anymore.”

Naomi glared, hissing at the hedgehog. “Sorin!” She scolded.

..

Aya followed Sento to the train station. The station had been abandoned after the Skywall disaster and had been left to rot for the past ten years. A perfect place to secretly leave Nippon.

Tooma stuck close to her and Yasu. He'd told her about being a Lupinranger and how his vs changer had been stolen. He couldn't defend himself except with his fists. She was confident that her fiance could handle things though.

Aya spotted a small group of people a bit farther away. Their daemons were an ocelot, a serval, a thick billed raven, and an asian water monitor.

“Ryuga! Ai!” Sento called. Two of the figures turned to look at them and hurried over. Misora and Ryuga hugged Sento. Miyako rubbed her head against Ai and Emyr.

Tooma came over to the other two. Aya followed. Yasu prowled around near her as Tooma introduced her to Kairi and Aoi. Sayaka growled softly as Aoi perched on her head. Yasu sniffed Aoi, breaking into a loud purr as Aoi cawed at him.

“Stay safe, you guys.” Tooma said.

Noel grinned. “Don't worry, Tooma-chan. I'll make sure nothing bad happens.”

The three of them said goodbye to their friends before leaving the station.

..

Just before the four of them were about to board the X train, Shori arrived.

“Kairi, wait up!”


	13. Journals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Ian) Gwen (means "white, fair, blessed" in Welsh) - a crocodile gecko, Nonbinary, she/her pronouns (Tarentola mauritanica)
> 
> (Haruto) Alya (means "sky, heaven, loftiness" in Arabic) - a European asp, female (Vipera aspis)
> 
> (Koyomi) Najm (means "star" in Arabic) - a collared pika, nonbinary, they/them pronouns (Ochotona collaris)
> 
> (Kosuke) Aodh (means "fire" in Irish Gaelic) - an African painted dog, female
> 
> (Mayu) Otso (means "bear" in Finnish) - a black bear, male
> 
> (Asuna) Bianca (means "white" in Italian) - a honey badger, female (Mellivora capensis)

Lyra sat in the library at Jordan college, Pantalaimon curled around her throat, his fur white as the snow outside.

The library was well lit by anbaric lamps and was well heated. The smell of the hot chocolatl she had on her desk, rapidly cooling the longer she forgot to drink it, wasn't even enough to pull her from the almost dream-like state of focus she was in. She flipped through the pages of notes that Hannah Relf and Malcolm Polstead had compiled on the alethiometer along with her own notes.

Another scholar, an archeologist by the name of Ian Yorkland came in. His crocodile gecko, Gwen, popped her head up from his shirt pocket and skittered along the bookshelves, helping him pick out books he needed. He kept not-so-subtly casting glances her way.

A shiver went down her spine like an anbaric shock as she quickly slipped her notes into her bag. Lyra went over to him.

“What is it, Yorkland?” She asked. “Do you need something?”

Pantalaimon glared at Gwen.

“Scholar Belacqua,” Ian began nervously. “You know how you got those journals from your friend years ago, right?”

“Course we do.” Pantalaimon said. “They were important to Arsène, so they're important to us.”

“We think someone might be trying to steal them. We saw someone lurking near your quarters a couple nights ago while you was out, Lyra.” Gwen told her.

Lyra knew about Ian's proficiency with ranged weapons, including improvised ones. He'd returned to Jordan after helping his team of friends in Texas. Amy, Daigo, Souji, Nobuharu, Yayoi, and Utsusemimaru kept in contact with him every once in a while. She'd heard about him and his teammates exploits through word of mouth in pubs or bookstores or even while studying. His eyesight was pretty good, so if he saw someone suspicious around her quarters a couple nights ago, she had no reason to doubt him.

“What did they look like?” She asked as she led him out of the library and down to her quarters. Her quarters were private. No one was allowed in without permission. If anyone had found out that she'd hidden half of Arsène's journals and alethiometer in her room, she was going to have a word with Malcolm and Alice. After the loss of the amber spyglass and Mary Malone getting injured three years ago, Lyra wasn't taking any chances.

“All I could make out was a person wearing a cloak. Their daemon was a large insect, like a moth.” Ian said.

“What kind of moth?”

“A luna moth, I think. Like the kind in New Denmark or New France.”

She reached her room. “I want you to stand lookout, Mr. Yorkland.”

Ian nodded, grinning cheekily. “Glad to, Miss Belacqua.”

Lyra and Pantalaimon rolled their eyes in exasperation as they unlocked the door. Lyra froze as she entered and took sight of the room.

It was a mess. It had been tidy and neat before she'd left this morning, but now there were papers strewn everywhere, books thrown off the shelves and papering the floor, table, counter, desk, and couch. She went further in and saw that the desk's false bottom where she stored the journals and alethiometer had been opened. She frantically searched through it, Pantalaimon squeezing himself inside it to check if anything had been taken.

He popped his head out, growling and baring his tiny white pine marten teeth in anger. “There's nothing left here, Lyra. Whoever it was, they took everything out of here.” Lyra almost growled herself at the news. She checked, then double and triple checked that nothing else had been stolen. As far as she could tell, only the alethiometer and Arsène's journals had been stolen.

Lyra came out of her quarters. “The alethiometer and the journals are missing.” She informed Ian.

“Should I ask Amy or Daigo for help?” Ian asked, Gwen climbing up onto his shoulder.

Lyra nodded her head as she bent down to pick up Pantalaimon. “Yes, if you think it'll help.”

..

It took them several hours to get to France from Nippon. They stopped in a train station that Noel said was in Paris. They disembarked and Noel shrunk the x trains down to portable size before storing them in his coat pockets.

Misora felt amazed by everything about the city. The large crowds of people and daemons, the buildings, the smells of food from the shops and markets, the noise of people talking, the cars driving around.

They stopped near a cafe and got food while Noel asked the shopkeeper for directions to Rambouillet. Misora and Ryuga sat on a bench, eating jambon-beurre sandwiches. Ai and Emyr laid underneath the bench at their feet, watching a flock of pigeons and people and their daemons going to wherever they planned to go today.

Ryuga smiled at her. “You're really enjoying this, aren't you, Misora?”

She nodded. Emyr purred loudly and brushed against her legs. “Yes, I am. I just haven't really experienced anything this exciting in a long time.”

“I know. I'm actually kind of enjoying it myself.” He said, taking a bite of his sandwich.

Ai hissed at random passersby and their daemons as she lounged underneath the bench.

Emyr crept toward the pigeons and sniffed one. The pigeon eyed the ocelot daemon before lightly pecking his nose. A couple minutes later, Emyr was swamped by pigeons. Misora laughed. “Get away from the pigeons, Em-chan.” She snickered. Emyr sneezed and growled playfully under his breath as he came back over, pigeon feathers clinging to his sleek golden and black spotted fur.

Noel came back from asking for directions. Vered followed him in the form of a brown and white pigeon. “The shopkeeper says we can catch a train to Rambouillet at Montparnasse station.” He informed them.

He seemed to just then realize it was just the three of them there. “Where's Kairi and Shori?” Vered asked.

“I think they went to go buy falconer’s gloves or something.” Ai answered.

Noel sighed. “Bon dieu, imbéciles. Arrêtez de vous promener.” He grumbled, shaking his head.

“I'll go look for them.” Ryuga offered.

“Come back in thirty minutes.” Noel told him.

Ryuga nodded before he and Ai ran off to go look for the Yano brothers. After they didn't return thirty minutes later, Noel and Misora awkwardly exchanged glances.

“Should we go ahead and leave without them?” Emyr asked.

Vered ruffled her feathers and turned into a chicken. “We should wait a little bit longer. If they're not back within, say...ten minutes, we'll leave.”

Noel smiled at his daemon gratefully. “Sounds like a good plan to me.” He sat down on the bench next to Misora. Emyr leapt up onto the space between them. Vered turned into a sand cat and sat next to him.

After ten minutes without a sign of Ryuga, Shori, or Kairi, they got up and left for the train station.

..

Ryuga entered a small shop on a side street. “Are you sure this is where they went, Ai?” He asked.

“Of course, Ryu.” She replied, hissing as she raced through his legs and into the shop.

“Hello, are you looking for something, Monsieur?” Ryuga looked behind the counter to see a young woman of Nipponese descent with a luna moth daemon. She wore a green shirt and skirt.

“Uh, yeah. I was looking for two friends of mine. Yano Kairi and Yano Shori. One has a wedge tailed eagle daemon and the other has a thick billed raven daemon.” He told her.

The woman frowned, thinking. “I think they came in here twenty minutes ago, asking if I had any falconer's gautlants available. I told them they could check in the back. They've been back there for awhile now. If you could go back there and get them to leave, that would be very helpful.”

Ryuga nodded. He went into the back of the store with the woman. “Hey, Kairi, Shori! We need to leave! C'mon!” He called.

No one answered. “Kairi? Shori?” Ryuga felt light headed all of a sudden. The door closed, trapping him in the room. “Oi! Lady, let me out!” He shouted. Ai scratched at the door.

He blinked, suddenly finding himself not in the back room of a shop in Paris, but somewhere else, a street corner in a different city.

He noticed two people nearby. “Kairi, Shori!” He said, running over to them.

The two brothers looked as confused as he did. “Where are we?” Kairi asked.

Ryuga shrugged. “I don't know!”

A woman was also nearby, looking just as confused as they were. She had a honey badger daemon. She came over to them. “Please tell me you know where we are.” She said desperately.

“Sorry, but your guess is as good as ours.” Kairi told her.

Aoi and Miki tensed as two men and two women came over to them. All four of them looked Nipponese. One of the men had a European asp daemon curled around his neck. The other man had an African painted dog. One of the women had a black bear daemon. The second woman had a collared pika clinging on her shoulder.

“Is everything alright?” The man with the snake daemon asked.

“We don't know where we are. We just arrived here recently and we got lost.” Shori replied.

“You're in Geneva, in Switzerland.” The woman with the black bear daemon answered.

“Thank you.” Ryuga replied. “I'm Banjou Ryuga and this is Ai. My friends are Yano Kairi and Aoi and Yano Shori and Miki.”

“I'm Asuna and this is Bianca.” The woman in pink told them, her honey badger daemon growling under her breath as she eyed them suspiciously.

“I'm Haruto Soma and this is Alya.” The man with the snake daemon introduced himself. “My friends are Mayu Inamori and Otso, Koyomi and Najm, and Kosuke Nitoh and Aodh.”

Haruto smiled. “C'mon, I'll bring you back to the magic shop I work at.”

Koyomi glared at him. “Is that really a good idea, Haruto?” She asked in German. 

Haruto waved a hand, Alya curling herself around his arm. “What? They're lost, Koyomi. We might as well help them out.”

Koyomi sighed. “Fine.”


	14. A crown of gems and gold

_Misora had seen the woman in her dreams before, back when she was in her seven year long coma and after she purified fullbottles for Sento. It had mostly been glimpses. Now, she stood before her. The woman looked human, other than her glowing bright green eyes, her dragon daemon, her slightly too long fingers, and being a little too tall to be human (she was at least seven feet tall). She resembled Tsukasa, her hair long and brown. She wore a white dress with a gold bracelet on one of her wrists._

_She was standing in a throne room, a man who looked like Ryuga but with black hair kneeling in front of her, a snake like daemon next to him. The daemon's feathered wings were folded against her sides._

_“I see you've become desperate for some way to stop the monster, my queen.” The man said, the title said with such mocking force that it was only meant as an insult. He raised his head to face her, his eyes a bright gold color._

_The dragon daemon, moving with surprisingly fluid motion for such a large creature, pushed their snout into the man's face, baring their teeth defensively. “How dare you speak to us like that, Armel! After you nearly destroyed our kingdom yourself.” The dragon's voice was harsh, but not grating on the ears._

_Vernage raised a hand. The guards in the room bowed and left._

_“Stand.” She told Armel._

_Armel smiled as he got to his feet, his teeth glinting cruelly._

_“As much as I, and everyone else, loathe your presence,” Vernage began. “We have fallen on desperate times. This monster has risen a tower of chaos and has defeated my strongest warriors. Armel, despite you being a tyrant king, you are a good fighter. As much as I don't want to, you have been released from prison because I'm afraid you're the only one left that could help me defeat this monster.”_

_Armel seemed surprised. “Really, Vernage? What's this monster's name?”_

“Misora, wake up! We're here.”

Misora startled awake as Noel shook her shoulder. “Okay, okay, I'm coming.” She mumbled, getting to her feet as Emyr yawned, stretched, and leapt off the seat onto the floor.

..

Three days after Noel, Kairi, Shori, Ryuga, and Misora left, little had changed. Sento still didn't come out of his lab.

Umika, Tooma, Aya, Sawa, Keiichiro, Sakuya, Shiho, and Tsukasa were eating in the cafe.

“There's going to be representative battle between Houkto and Touto.”

Aya looked at Umika. “Where did you hear that?”

“From the prime minister himself. He wants to do it so that there aren't anymore deaths than there already have been.” Sorin climbed out of the pocket on Umika's jacket and jumped onto the counter top.

“That sounds suspicious.” Tsukasa remarked. Keiichiro nodded, frowning and running his hands through Mio's fur.

“I was thinking one or two of us could participate.” Umika added. She fidgeted nervously with her skirt and jacket as she glanced at Shiho and Sawa.

“I'll do it.” Sawa offered. Hakim growled.

She sighed in relief and continued eating the ramen noodles she had.

..

Sento visited Aoba's grave. He’d brought flowers from a shop that was still open on his way there. Miyako hopped after him before laying down on the ground.

As he placed the flowers on the ground, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. "Yo," Sento froze, turning to see Aoba behind him. He flinched, scrambling away. Miyako pressed herself against him. He reached out and the hallucination disappeared. Miyako laid her ears back as she sniffed at his trenchcoat.

He got up and quickly left. As he walked away from the spot where he'd killed someone, he heard a growl. Sento froze as he spotted a caracal daemon, standing a meter away, staring at him. It was Unnr.

Miyako hopped over to the other daemon. The two spoke for a few minutes before she came back over. "She wants us to come with her for training." She told him.

"For what? The representative battle?"

Miyako nodded. "I think so."

Cautiously, Sento followed the caracal to an abandoned building. A small garden grew in the center, having grown wild long ago. Unnr stopped and sat down on the concrete pavement on the edge of the garden.

Soichi appeared and set a case down on the ground. He smirked. "I was almost worried you wouldn't come, Sento." He sounded happy, like he had when he used to greet Sento after he and Miyako came home from fighting Smash.

"What do you want, Stalk?" Sento demanded.

Miyako drummed her front paws on the ground and glared at Unnr. The caracal yawned and laid her head on her paws.

"I just want to help you get out of this funk of yours." Soichi laughed. 

Sento glared. "Why are you laughing?"

"When someone is injected with Nebula Gas, they're no longer human." Unnr told him. "You didn't kill a person, you destroyed a weapon. This is war. It was...inevitable."

Miyako's ears flattened and she started drumming her paws on the ground again and gritting her teeth together. She ran at Unnr and started boxing the caracal with her front paws and tearing at her ears. Unnr simply picked the jackrabbit up by the scruff and threw her away. 

"People die in wars. That's a damn fact." Unnr snarled.

"Fighting in the representative battle might be the only chance you have to end things early. If you don't do it, someone else might fight instead, like Sawa or Aya." Soichi continued. "You said you wanted to protect people. Were you lying when you said that? A true hero wouldn't give up after one little setback."

Sento reached for the case and opened it. There were fullbottles inside.

"You have one week to learn how to use those bottles."

Sento put the bottles in the build driver. **_Rose. Gyrocopter. Best match!_ ** He cranked it. **_Are you ready?_ **He hesitated. Miyako ran over to him.

"Henshin!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Vernage) Ejder (means "dragon" in Turkish) - a western dragon like creature with horns and long teeth and fur, nonbinary, they/them pronouns
> 
> (Armel) Madoc (means "fortunate" in Welsh) - a bird/snake like creature with a reptilian face and feathered wings, nonbinary, she/her pronouns


	15. Regrets collect like old friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from the song, "Shake it out" by Florence and the machine.

Asuna stared in amazement as they entered the antique shop. It was a rather small shop with a couple rooms, a small kitchen, a couple bathrooms, and a few bedrooms on the second floor and a living room parlor, the front of the shop where people could buy stuff, and a room where the owner worked on the first floor. The walls were painted white and adorned with various antiques.

Wajima introduced himself to them, his monarch butterfly daemon flying around Bianca's head. Shunpei, Wajima's apprentice, also introduced himself. His daemon was a red breasted nuthatch. Rinko, another of Haruto's allies, seemed nice. Her daemon was a large dog with black fur.

Kairi seemed uncomfortable around her, possibly because Rinko was a police officer.

On a table surrounded by chairs in the parlor, was a canvas marked with fourteen symbols and three sticks with jewels tied to the ends. Asuna recognized it as a truth telling device, a precursor to the legendary alethiometer. Such devices had been used around the world for ages. She remembered Melt and Hibiki reading books on truth telling and Dust before and a couple had had pictures of ancient truth telling devices.

"What's this used for?" She asked. Bianca put her front paws on the table and sniffed the stones, muttering the names of them under her breath. "Garnet, Sunstone, and Labradorite."

Koyomi's daemon, Najm, hopped onto the table. "We use it to figure out if a person is a Gate or not and where the Phantoms are going to strike next. Unlike the alethiometer, our truth telling device only answers yes or no questions and how many of something there is."

Ryuga perked up. "Hey, my friend, Kiryu Sento, had a truth telling device that was made to look like an alethiometer. A pretty shoddy looking one, too."

"Wow, how did he end up getting a fake like that?" Koyomi asked.

Ryuga shrugged. "I don't know. The owner of the cafe I live at got it before he took Sento in."

Haruto raised a hand before anyone could say anything else. "Koyomi," he instructed. "We need to make sure none of them are Gates."

"What's a Gate?" Shori asked.

"A Gate is someone who is in danger of falling into despair. Phantoms seek them out to create more Phantoms by driving a Gate to despair. If a Gate goes over the despair event horizon, their inner Phantom will bust out, killing their host." Koyomi explained.

They sat down in the chairs around the table as Koyomi and Najm settled down. Koyomi picked up two sticks in each hand, the one with garnet and the one with labradorite. She positioned one over a symbol shaped like a circle and the other over the Roman numeral for 1. The young woman and her daemon seemed to enter a trance of sorts as the third stick shifted slightly from zero to two.

Koyomi exhaled as she came out of the trance. She set the sticks down on the table. "Two of you are Gates." She answered. She pointed at Kairi and Ryuga.

Before anyone could do anything, Kairi got up and bolted, running out the door. The room was thrown into chaos as Shori, Rinko, and Mayu ran out after him.

Asuna reached out and caught Koyomi when the younger woman almost fell over after standing up. "You okay?" Bianca asked.

"We're fine. Just a little tired." Najm answered, twitching their ears as they climbed up onto the arm of the couch.

Asuna lowered Koyomi onto the couch and turned to Haruto and Ryuga. "How do we stop Phantoms from driving a Gate to despair?"

Alya hissed, flicking her tongue in and out. "We go into the Gate's Underworld and fight the Phantom using magic. If a Gate gets through their despair and manages to hold back their inner Phantom themselves, they become capable of becoming a Wizard and using magic." She replied.

Ryuga nodded. "So, can you do it now?" Ai hissed and bit his leg, leaving a large bite mark. "Ow!" Ryuga glared at his daemon. "Ai, that hurt!"

The water monitor growled, lashing her tail, and climbed up onto the chair next to him.

Haruto frowned. "Sadly, no we can't. The Gate needs to be driven into despair by an already awakened Phantom first. Besides, we should help follow Kairi." He grabbed a couple rings, shoving them into the pockets of his jeans before heading out the door.

Asuna and Ryuga glanced at each other before shrugging and leaving as well.

..

"I see there's a couple potential Gates that just arrived in Geneva." Gremlin said, skipping onto the rooftop of a building. His host's daemon, a gyrfalcon, flew after him.

Medusa turned to glare at the other Phantom. Her daemon, a ferret, growled. "One of them will be mine, Gremlin." She walked over to him. "Or have you forgotten what Wiseman said about gathering humans for the Sabbath?"

He grinned at her in an annoyingly cocky way, even as their two "daemons" glared at each other. "You know I don't care about what Wiseman says."

Medusa rolled her eyes before leaving the rooftop.

..

Before they'd followed Noel to France, Kairi had had an argument with his brother. Something about Shori underestimating him while talking to Kazumi. Kairi had run off after punching his brother in the face.

Kairi ran through the streets. He dodged around people and their daemons and ducked into a warehouse. Aoi landed next to him. He'd been running for an hour now. He'd seemingly lost his brother and the police officer a while ago.

"Hey, kid, you lost?" He turned to see a woman of Japanese descent with a ferret daemon following her. Something in the way the ferret stared at him unnerved him. It's eyes looked glassy and dead, like a taxidermy or a puppet. Kairi took a couple steps backwards as the woman leaned close to him.

"Who are you?" He demanded.

"I'm Medusa. I've been spying on the Ganglers for a while. I heard you were fighting them and I'd thought I'd tell you some important information."

Kairi and Aoi side-eyed her sucipicously. "Go on."

Medusa frowned. "Due to eating a lot of Dust, Ganglers are able to mimic the daemons of the humans they're disguised as, right down to the daemon's personality and voice. Another interesting thing is that all of the humans taken by Zamigo on Earth have become Gangler disguises."

Kairi froze. Aoi's feathers ruffled. "No…" If that was true, then that meant his brother was dead. An imposter was in his place.

Aoi screeched and flung herself at Medusa's ferret. The ferret grabbed her left wing in her teeth and tore a large amount of flight feathers from Aoi's wing.

He noticed purple cracks spreading across Aoi. Kairi looked at his hands and saw purple cracks spreading up his arms and across the back and palms of his hands. Medusa grinned. “And now, descend into despair and unleash your inner phantom.”

A creature similar to a large dog appeared, covered in black fur with a skull like marking on it’s face. A chain dangled from the dog's shoulders. Kairi found himself unable to move as the Phantom, _Gytrash,_ lunged and sank it's teeth into his arm.

Kairi struggled as Aoi screamed. Out of the corner of his eye, he was dimly aware of Aoi struggling against the ferret's sharp teeth. "You damn weasel! Let go! Let go! Kairi! Kairi, help me! Please!"

Something seemed to snap when he heard his daemon screaming for him. He'd found Aoi's chiding and nagging him to be as annoying as when his brother used to yell, nag, or argue with him. But she was his soul, a part of him. She cared for him and only wanted the best. Sure, she'd reminded him of his brother at times, but she wasn't Shori, she was him.

Kairi grabbed the chains that dangled around Gytrash, looped them around the dog's throat, and pulled tightly. The dog choked, letting go of his arm. Kairi kicked the dog in the face, kicking and punching until the dog was lying on the ground, unmoving.

His vision cleared. Medusa and her ferret were gone. He raced over to Aoi. The raven was lying on the ground, feathers from her wings scattered about. She wasn't bleeding but she looked dazed. Kairi vaguely registered that his arm was dripping blood everywhere. His head was pounding.

He heard faint footsteps and felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Kairi, are you okay?" He felt hands grabbing him and pulling him to his feet.

"I'm fine!" He spat. The person helping him was Haruto.

Alya gently nudged Aoi with her nose, hissing. Kairi picked up Aoi and stroked the white feathers on the back of her neck.

..

Ryuga groaned. Ai hissed in annoyance. Somehow, he'd gotten himself separated from Asuna and Haruto while following them. He ducked into a small alley between buildings and leaned against a wall.

"We're lost again." Ai growled.

"Yeah." He agreed.

"Did you see which way Asuna or Haruto went?"

"Nope."

Something fell on the ground from the roof above them. Ryuga looked up and caught a glimpse of a large raptor bird flying off. Ai went over and grabbed the thing in her jaws before placing it in Ryuga's hand.

It was a golden necklace with green stones in it. The same shade of gold as Misora's bracelet.

_Ryuga had been accompanying his mom during her shift as a security guard on the day of the Skywall incident. His mother had received a call over her radio about a child who'd fainted in the room where the Mars artifacts were being displayed._

_Ryuga had followed her. As his mom called an ambulance, he'd noticed something in one of the other cases; a necklace made of gold with green stones in it. One of the other artifacts, a golden bracelet, was missing from the same case. Nothing looked like it had been disturbed._

_He went over to take a closer look. Ryuga didn't remember much of what happened next but he remembered his mom taking him out to the car where his dad waited for them. The ambulance drove off to a hospital around that time._


	16. As the hills turn into holes, I fill them with gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Empire" by Of Monsters and Men

The first thing they did after they got off the train was go to a clothing store and buy new clothes.

Noel had noticed people giving him odd looks earlier in Paris when he'd went to ask for directions. He'd noticed that his uniform looked out of place among everyone else. Though he had a feeling that it wasn’t just because of his clothes, but his race and accent, as well. (Vered, who'd been in the form of a serval at the time, had snarled at a woman's maned wolf daemon who'd snapped at her tail as they walked past. Noel had picked her up in case she decided to start a fight) He’d experienced some awkward and sometimes uncomfortable situations even before he started working as an undercover cop because he wasn’t white and had an obvious Auvergnat Occitan accent. His white ile-de-france born coworkers had mocked his and other non French speaking, rural, or non white officers’ accents many times before, calling them “unprofessional”, “patois”, and “uncivilized” (the latter had always made his blood boil hearing it). He could only imagine the hell that Satoru must have gone through after getting transferred. (Part of the reason he’d left for Japan had been to temporarily escape the mocking of his coworkers.)

The clothing style in this world’s Europe seemed similar to early 1900's fashion in his world, suits and vests for men, dresses for women, compared to Nippon, which had more modern (ish) clothing styles, like 1990's or 2000's styles in his world. Noel and Misora left after paying and went into the train station restrooms to get dressed. He packed their regular clothes into a bag before storing the bag on the x trains.

"You look handsome, Noel." Misora chuckled. He was wearing a blue pinstripe suit with a white button down dress shirt underneath. He'd picked out a pair of black dress shoes to wear. He’d been intending to go for a businessman sort of look, but might have accidentally ended up more 1910/1920’s New York gangster style.

Noel grinned. "Same for you, mademoiselle." She had on a yellow sun dress with a full skirt and a white blouse underneath. She'd refused to change into high heels. (Noel couldn't blame her. He knew how much stress those kind of shoes could put on someone's ankles.)

Emyr pressed up against Misora's side. Vered turned into a lynx and trotted beside him as they left the town.

Noel took Good Striker out from the x train gold.

"Goodie, I need you to scout ahead for any witch daemons and inform them we want to talk to them." Noel told him.

"Got it." Goodie said. He flew off in the direction of the forest. As they waited, Vered shifted into a bird eating tarantula.

“Noel,” Misora said, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “Did you learn Nipponese from your parents?”

Noel blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected Misora to ask something like that, but then again, annoying questions like that came up occasionally (Both Kairi and Sakuya had brought up the question on separate occasions before). He shook his head. “No, neither of my birth parents knew Japanese. They were both born and raised in France, as was I, and both sets of my grandparents. I’m a fourth generation immigrant, so I learned the language myself, since I was like, “hey, why not?” and also because I needed to learn a couple languages to be an undercover cop.” 

“Why is your daemon’s name Hebrew? You don’t speak the language, do you?”

“No, we don’t speak Hebrew.” Vered answered for him. “There was this Sephardic Jewish officer who worked with him back in our world’s Paris who Noel dated for a few months before they broke up. He used to give roses to him and called him “Vered”, a Hebrew name meaning “rose” as a cutesy nickname.” Noel blushed and gently pushed his daemon off his arm where she turned into a hawk moth and settled on the collar of his suit jacket.

A few minutes later, Good Striker came back with a golden oriole following him. "Are you the ones looking to speak to the Witch clan?" The oriole asked.

"Òc." Noel answered. The oriole looked a bit taken aback by his answer (or probably just because he'd answered in Occitan instead of French). "Follow me." She said. The oriole flew up into the air. As they followed the bird daemon, the forest closed in around them, the cornish oak trees casting long shadows across the forest floor. The oriole landed on a tree branch. "Domaisèla Laurent, there are people here who wish to speak to you."

A woman appeared from between the trees, sliding out of the shadows like she'd simply coalesced into being from the trees and undergrowth. She wore a dark blue dress and a small skirt. Her feet were bare. Her hair fell across her back in dark black ringlets into which red and yellow poppies were braided. Her skin was as dark as her hair. She was as tall as Tooma or Tsukasa. Everything about her radiated authority.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Laurent asked.

"I'm Noel Takao and Vered and this is Misora Isurugi and Emyr." Noel said. "We came to see if we could find any information on Arsène Lupin."

The witch's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"We're looking for the alethiometer he had. His butler, Kogure, told us." Misora said.

"They have Good Striker with them, Mademoiselle." The witch's oriole daemon added.

Laurent looked thoughtful. "I sense no lies to your words then." 

..

Ian was on his way to the library to research an area he was going to be doing an archeology dig in when a man wearing a red vest bumped into him.

“Sorry.” The man apologized in Nipponese. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” The man looked young, roughly in his early twenties, with short black hair and brown eyes. He wore clothes that wouldn’t look out of place during the Renaissance era. His daemon was a cream point apple headed siamese cat who arched her back and hissed at Gwen.

The young girl with him wore similar clothes, a white shirt with golden embroidery and a blue coat. She looked to be in her early teens, possibly 11 or 12 years old. Her daemon was in the form of a coconut crab.

They didn't look like students or scholars, so they most likely had come from somewhere other than Oxford. "Where are you two from?" Ian asked.

"Nippon." The man's daemon answered. She wound herself around the man's legs nervously.

"Hey, I've worked with people from Nippon before. What are your names?"

The man grinned. "I'm Kou and this is Sara."

"I'm Oto and this is Anup." The girl said.

"I'm Ian Yorkland and this is my daemon, Gwen. Neis cwrdd â chi."

Gwen hopped out of his jacket pocket and onto the ground and hissed at Sara. The cat hissed back, her tail twitching. Anup changed into a frilled lizard and hissed at Gwen.

"Well, let's go talk somewhere quiet, shall we?" Ian said. 


	17. Dear fellow traveler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from "Dear Fellow Traveler" by Sea Wolf.
> 
> In my worldbuilding headcanons for Lyra's world, some French cities and places use their Breton, Occitan, and Arpitan names instead of their French names.
> 
> Occitan names (French names in paranthesis)   
> Bordèu (Bordeaux), Aush (Auch), Tolosa (Toulouse), Massís Central (Massif Central), Sant Flor (Saint-Flour), Tièrn (Thiers)
> 
> Breton names  
> Gwened (Vannes), Langeag (Langueux)
> 
> Arpitan names   
> Liyon (Lyon), Èneci (Annecy), Chambèri (Chambéry)

Misora was surprised that Noel so readily told the witch queen what they were doing and information about himself. Considering he was a phantom thief and a police officer, she would have expected him to be a little more evasive with his answers. 

"Where are you from, Noel?" 

"Sant Flor in the Cantal department. I lived on a small farm there for the first six years of my life before I met Arsène." His face seemed to get wistful, his tone nolgastic, as he talked. Vered turned into a black cat and head-butted his legs. 

Misora couldn't help thinking about her own childhood, how her father had not just been her caretaker but her friend. Then that fateful school trip had happened and she'd found herself in the hospital and later, a Faust lab, slipping in and out of a coma for the next seven years, then finally waking up for good two years ago and finding that everything had changed; her father acting strange, her mother missing, and Emyr, her beautiful, faithful Emyr, settled without her or him knowing. 

At first, she'd been excited that Emyr had settled in a form so similar to her father's Unnr. A caracal and an ocelot. Ever since she'd found out that he was Blood Stalk, the man with the slow loris daemon that had made her skin crawl and made Emyr snarl and bristle every time they'd encountered him, the man who'd given Sento and Miyako amnesia, had killed Ryuga's girlfriend, Kasumi, and had manipulated them all, Emyr's form made her feel slightly sick everytime she was reminded of her dad. 

Emyr purred and wound himself around her legs. "Don't worry, Misora," He purred as he reared up on his hind legs to swipe at a falling leaf. "We both know we're not like him at all." 

"I know, Em-chan," She said, scratching him underneath his chin until he purred loudly. "But it's hard to remember that he's not like he used to be." 

Thinking about her father made her think of Sento. When she first met him, she'd thought he was odd and strange because of the amnesia, but over time she'd come to think of him as an older brother. Being an only child, Misora had never really had an older sibling figure before Sento and Miyako came around. Their relationship was made up of the other looking out for them. Even now, she reminded herself, she was looking for the alethiometer to help Sento. Once she got ahold of it, she'd ask it how to stop the war and how to help Sento smile again. She missed his smile. After she'd found out he was Takumi Katsuragi, the man who'd experimented on her and Ryuga, she still thought of him as her brother. He hadn't known. As far as Misora and Emyr were concerned, Sento wasn't Takumi and the things Katsuragi had done were his actions, not Sento's. Sento wouldn't do anything like that without knowing. Sento both was and wasn't Takumi and Miyako both was and wasn't Ren.

The bracelet around her wrist started tingling like it did when she purified a fullbottle. Emyr smacked it with his paw and flattened his ears, the corner of his lips rising to reveal sharp white teeth. Emyr biting the bracelet usually made it stop tingling. 

Noel was still talking to the witch queen, Vered having changed into a small wildcat of some sort. She had spotted fur and a long fluffy tail that looked longer than her body. 

Misora's head started hurting. She strained to hear what the witch queen was saying. 

"I heard that Lyra Silvertongue has access to an alethiometer at Jordan College in Oxford. Me and a couple of my girls could get you there. There is a library in Tièrn, a good three days walk from here on foot -" 

"We have a Lupin Collection piece that we can use to get there in half the time." Noel interrupted. 

The witch queen nodded. "Of course. From there, you can go to Sant Flor to rest or go straight on to Tolosa. Miss Silvertongue is attending a meeting on alethiometrology there this weekend." 

Noel smiled. "Mercés, Domaisèla." 

She felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Noel next to her, his brow furrowed in worry. "Misora, are you alright?" 

She nodded. "I'm...I'm fine. Just a headache. I'll probably be better when we get going." Emyr bristled, his back arched and his fur puffed up so he looked twice his size. His fur started settling down when Noel took out the x trains and started setting the course for Tièrn. 

Vered turned into a black monkey that looked like a lion with golden feet, tail, and hands to help pilot the train. 

Misora and Emyr took a seat as the train started moving and watched the scenery out the window, trying to think of nothing in particular. 

The area around Tièrn was mostly forested mountains covered in trees, a sea of green that looked tall enough to touch the sky. As they entered what Noel said was called "Durolle Valley", there were small houses with pink or brown colored tiled roofs, some made of smooth stone or cobblestones. One had a small Ford Model T outside, parked just on the edge of a street. Another had flowers growing around it or a field where cows or goats were grazing. The Durolle river carved out the valley like a knife carving a pattern through wood. As they entered the city, the houses grew more frequent and clustered together. The sky turned to beautiful shades of red, orange, and pink as the sun set. 

Noel came over to her once they stopped and helped her off. After he put up the x trains, he came over to her. Vered was still a lion like monkey. "Are you okay?" He asked. 

Misora nodded. "I'm fine. I just got light headed."

"Maybe we should get some food." Vered suggested. "We haven't eaten in a while." 

Emyr growled, his tail lashing back and forth uncomfortably. They found a restaurant, ate some food, paid, and set off again. The sun had set already by that point and the moon had risen. 

Misora laid on the seat on the X train gold with Emyr curled up next to her. Her headache had returned. 


	18. Back home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm amazed and super proud of myself that I managed to write this chapter minutes after posting the last one.

Five days before the representative battle was scheduled to take place and around the same time Kairi fought Gytrash and Misora and Noel entered Tièrn, Keiichiro, Umika, Shiho, Sakuya, Tsukasa, Sawa, Satoru, and Tooma went searching for the window to their world. It took them a little over half an hour to find it, even with Sayaka helping Mio, Marin, and Zhi with scent tracking. 

Tooma had announced shortly before they'd gone to find the window that he was planning to stay in Sento's world to help Aya get ready for the battle. 

Sawa had volunteered to come to the Patorangers' world in his place. 

They went through and found themselves in Tokyo, two blocks from Bistro Juror and the GSPO headquarters. As they walked, Keiichiro tried to think up an excuse that would explain why he and his co-workers were absent for an entire week and how Satoru had found them. Tsukasa had texted Hilltop an hour ago with a made up story about getting kidnapped by Ganglers and escaping, but Keiichiro wasn't really confident that would work. 

As they approached the GSPO station, Umika guided Shiho and Sawa over to the bistro. Naomi was too big to hide in Shiho's clothes, so she'd opted to drape herself over Shiho's shoulders. Hakim followed at Sawa's heels. Sorin hid inside a pocket in Umika's jacket. 

To his surprise and relief, Tsukasa's excuse worked. "I'm glad you all are back safe. You have a backlog of paperwork to do, though, so you three need to get on that immediately." Hilltop said. "Satoru, since you're here, you might as well help them." 

Tsukasa, Keiichiro, and Sakuya sat at their desks and Satoru pulled over a chair to sit next to Sakuya. Zhi scrambled onto Sakuya's desk and helped him sort through his stack of paperwork. Hayato perched on a shelf above Tsukasa's head (Keiichiro was worried the shelf wouldn't hold the vulture's weight, the shelf bowing under him, but when it didn't seem to be in danger of breaking or collapsing, he calmed down). Mio circled twice and laid down next to Keiichiro's chair. 

Marin paced around the office, sniffing Jim Carter, the table in the center, Hilltop's desk, the leather bench that was pushed against one wall, and the filing cabinets. Something seemed to be troubling the snow leopard. He kept laying his ears back, baring his teeth at things, growling under his breath, snorting and chuffing, lashing his tail back and forth. 

Mio and Hayato went over to him. The german shepherd whuffed under her breath as she approached Marin. Hayato landed on top of a filing cabinet. They spoke in quiet, low whispers as they asked the other daemon if anything was wrong. Keiichiro kept half his attention on his paperwork, the other half on the daemon's conversation. 

"...It's important but...I...I'll tell you guys later tonight after our shifts end, okay?" Marin mumbled. He laid down and started chewing his tail. 

..

Later a few hours after their shifts ended, around half an hour before midnight, Tsukasa, Sakuya, and Keiichiro met Marin on the corner near the Bistro Jurer. Satoru was nowhere around and the daemon was alone. 

Mio and Zhi greeted Marin by going up and sniffing noses with him while Hayato greeted the snow leopard by bringing him a stick he'd found under a tree a block from the police station. 

Marin chuffed gratefully. 

"So, what did you want to tell us, Marin?" Keiichiro asked. 

Marin's ears perked up. "Alright. It concerns Satoru but I'm gonna have to tell a bit of story to explain and it takes a little while to explain it all." 

Mio licked his face. "Don't worry, take as long as you need." She assured him.

"At first, we - but we weren't the two of us yet, just Satoru - we had no idea what happened exactly. One minute, he'd been getting ready to board a plane to Japan to see you all for the holidays, the next he was cold all over. He came to in a facility that was nothing but white walls and blinding lights that left him disoriented and a migraine pounding in his head. His clothes were not made for this kind of cold. It felt like his entire body was made of ice. 

"Satoru saw other people sometimes, not a whole lot. Just glimpses. Some of them had animals with them. Others did not.

"Then, a man wearing European clothes that looked like they were from the late 19th century had appeared." Marin's voice became a loud, angry hiss as he described the man. "A white shirt, a coat, dress shoes, brown pants. He looked like a professor or a guy who was a little too interested in Victorian era Britain. He had a snow leopard daemon named Stelmaria. The man had approached him and told him he could help him escape. "How?" He'd asked. 

"The man grinned and suddenly, Satoru was no longer in the very very cold gray building with the blinding lights. He was on a mountain top, the air filled with smoke, his chest heaving as he coughed and wheezed. His police training was useless in this situation. It took Satoru a couple minutes to realize he was not on a mountain but a volcano, an active volcano. Mount Osore, I think it was.

"He noticed a shrine farther up the slope. As he walked, his limbs grew heavier and his steps slower. He saw things that looked like graves. Was this the Underworld? He shook his head, his thoughts growing foggier. 

"Right when he reached the top of the slope, he collapsed, his chest aching like something was digging into it with sharp claws. He leaned over the side of the mountain and vomited. His head hurt. 

"Then the pain receded." Marin's voice grew softer. "He turned to see a confused looking snow leopard - me - staring at him. "Qui es-tu?" He wasn't sure why he asked the question in French instead of Japanese and I'm not sure why he did either. 

"I spoke in a low, masculine voice with a northern french accent in Japanese. I said, "I am you." 

"Before Satoru or I could say anything, we were back in the cold, cold building with the almost blinding white walls and floor and ceiling, the both of us freezing." His voice had returned to an angry, bitter growl. "He named me Marin. 

"It wasn't until sometime later that we heard about a couple prisoners escaping. Unfortunately, only one of the two of us could escape successfully. So, I decided to take the risk and leave Satoru behind so I could find help."

The Patorangers and their daemons were left staring in horror and shock as Marin finished his story. 

After a couple seconds, Zhi asked a question. "Do you remember anything else about the facility?" 

Marin snarled, baring his large teeth at the spiny mouse. "There was this...person, I think, that wore a suit of purple and silver armour that helped the Ganglers keep prisoners contained. There was also a room which I was unable to get into when I scouted the facility. I heard screaming coming from inside a couple times."

He crouched down like he was about to pounce on something. "I managed to get outside briefly and follow a Gangler to Nippon in Sento's world. During the ten minutes I spent outside, I saw that the area around the facility was nothing but a bare wasteland of ice and rock near the ocean. I think it was somewhere on the...Antarctic coast in Sento's world. Where exactly in Antarctica, I have no idea."

"Okay…" Tsukasa said. "We should do some research on this stuff and find out how to get rid of the Gangler impersonating Satoru." 

In the shadows of a tree nearby, a striped polecat scurried down a tree trunk. He made his way across the street and climbed in through an open window of the Bistro. 

"Sawa," he called. 

Sawa poked her head around the door. "Yes, Hakim?" 

"Go wake up Shiho and Umika and get Umika to call Kogure. I think they might want to hear what I've learned while I was out."


	19. They call me devil

After Kairi had fought Gytrash, Haruto had brought him back to the antique shop. That's where the two of them had been for the last couple hours. Haruto had called Rinko and a couple minutes later, Rinko, Shori, Mayu, and Asuna were back at the shop. Nitoh had probably gone out to hunt for Phantoms so Chimera could eat. (According to Haruto, Nitoh travelled a lot and lived in a camping tent.)

Around the time the sun started setting, Rinko had left for her apartment and Mayu had left for her night classes on her college campus. Shori, Wajima, Haruto, and Shunpei had all fallen asleep a little while ago.

Koyomi had gotten up a few minutes ago and had left her room. Asuna was still awake. 

Kairi didn't feel like he could sleep after what had happened today. Aoi's bleeding that odd golden substance had stopped. (Haruto had called the substance "Dust" and had told him how daemons were made of Dust, basically Dust given corporeal form) Kairi's own injuries had been bandaged by Haruto. 

Shori was asleep on a couch in the parlor, Miki nesting beside him on his stomach. (How the hell did his older brother stand that? Miki was several kilograms heavier than Aoi and her settled form was a wedge tailed eagle, one of the largest birds of prey in the world only surpassed by the harpy eagle and the Philippine eagle.) 

Kairi got up and silently slipped out of the shop, Aoi following him. Being a phantom thief along with a former delinquent, he'd learned how to move quickly and silently so people wouldn't notice him. He'd also learned sleight of hand tricks. (Though he'd be the first to admit he wasn't the best at sleight of hand. Umika had taken to it surprisingly quicker than either he or Tooma did.)

He stopped at a small closed cafe across the street and carefully pulled a chair off a table and sat down. A thought occurred to him just then. "Hey, Aoi," He said, turning as his daemon landed on the table in front of him. "Did Banjou come back to the shop?"

Aoi turned her head and carefully preened her uninjured wing for a full minute before answering him. "No, he didn't." She cawed. 

..

Asuna walked up behind Kairi. She was honestly surprised that he didn't even flinch once he noticed her. "What was that about Banjou?" She asked. 

Kairi turned around in his chair so he was sitting in it backwards. "I was talking to my daemon about how it was odd that Banjou didn't come back. I've heard from his friend, Misora, that he was "a stupid musclehead" but I don't think he's stupid enough to get himself lost for this long." 

Asuna frowned. "It does seem kinda strange." She said. 

"What if we go looking for him?" Bianca suggested. "I remember what he and Ai smell like, so I can track them." 

Aoi cocked her head to the side in curiosity. "What do they smell like?"

Bianca laughed. "Boxing gloves, nebula gas, and ramen." 

"What do I smell like?" The thick billed raven asked. 

Bianca reared up on her hind legs and put her front paws on the table to sniff the bird. She sneezed. "Poor choices, theatrics, and dumbassery. And also miso soup."

Kairi snickered, shaking his head. "Alright, let's go search for the muscle headed dragon man." 

He got to his feet and put the chair back on the cafe table. 

Asuna was starting to find Kairi funny. He reminded her a bit of Towa. An annoying mischievous gremlin at first glance, but actually a caring person deep down, even if he didn't like showing it. 

As the two of them raced through the streets of Geneva, they noticed a few people wearing priestly clothes. White clothed men and women with high collars and batons. Asuna had heard from Ui about the Magisterium's control over Europe and Central Asia and how the Magisterium had created a sort of police force, the Consistorial Court of Discipline, to keep people in line. Her father had gotten into quite a few negotiations with the Court over paleontology expeditions and dig sites, which he regarded as a major headache. There were a lot of bishops roaming the streets of Geneva tonight. 

She cautiously took her Ryusoul out of her coat pocket as they approached a side street leading to a library. 

The library building looked normal. It was solid grayish-white stone with a glass door. The library's name was printed on a sign on the lawn in German. 

There were a lot of Magisterium people out front. 

"Looks like something's going on over there." Kairi noted. 

As they approached the building, someone grabbed her and Kairi and roughly dragged them around the side of another building. 

It was Nitoh. Aodh stood beside him, her brindled fur bristling and rounded ears flattened to her head. 

"What the hell are you two doing here? There's a Phantom around this area." He snapped. He sounded more upset about Kairi being there than Asuna. 

"We're looking for Banjou." Aoi said. "He's been missing for hours, so we set off to find him."

Nitoh looked annoyed. "Well, I doubt he's here." 

"But his scent leads to this area." Bianca said. 

Aodh growled. "We'll find Banjou ourselves. Go back to the shop -" 

A loud crash of breaking glass and crumbling stone interrupted her. All three of them turned to stare as a large, snake like creature with feathered wings burst out of a window of the library. It had small legs, each ending with a foot with dull claws and a shark like fin for a tail. The creature landed on the ground and flicked it's tongue in and out, tasting the air. It's pupils widened into circles, making it's yellow eyes seem almost black. The dragon-snake creature started heading straight toward them. 

Nitoh, Kairi, and Asuna ran behind a different building. Nitoh took a ring out of his pocket as a driver appeared around his waist. 

"What are you doing?" Kairi hissed. 

"Making sure I can fight that beast if it tries to attack us." Nitoh replied, glaring. "And also so I can have Chimera eat any Phantoms around here."

**_Set, open._ ** "Henshin."  **_L-I-O-N, Lion!_ **

Asuna grabbed her Ryusoul and put it in her Ryusoul changer. "Ryusoul change."  **_Ryu so cool! Bwahahahahaha!_ ** She grabbed her sword from the sheath on her back. 

The creature turned to see a large black dog and a hyaenodon snarling at it as a golden magician and a pink knight prepared for a fight. 

_ "Hmm. Not worth my time." _ The creature's voice was femenine and had a disinterested tone to it. It's expression looked bored. 

_ "Madoc,"  _ Asuna looked up when the deep voice rang out, craning to see past the dragon-snake. A familiar man stood behind it, just on the edge of the library lawn. 

A priest from the Court, a young man of Central Asian descent with a nipponese spider crab daemon, stepped behind the man. "Sir, you are under arrest for disturbing the peace. You are coming with me and my men until you can get your behavior back in line." 

The man, who looked like Banjou but wasn't Banjou, narrowed his gold eyes at the priest. "What's your name?" He asked.

The priest frowned. "Boran." 

The man grinned, his teeth sharp. "Is this your first time arresting someone, Boran?" 

Boran backed away slightly, readying his baton to strike. "Yes."

_ "Madoc,"  _ His voice dropped to a hiss.  _ "Let's show this man what happens to people whose behavior is out of line, shall we?" _

The dragon-snake creature slithered over to the spider crab and sniffed him. It's feathers bristled eagerly as it's pupils widened excitedly. 

The next words were so quiet, Asuna barely heard them. 

_ "Madoc, do what you like with this man." _ Almost too quick to register, the dragon-snake opened her mouth and squeezed the priest's head, splitting it open as the man's spider crab daemon turned to golden Dust. 

The Dust was absorbed by something around the man's neck; a reddish-gold necklace inlaid with bright green emeralds. 

The man snapped his fingers and was gone, leaving nothing but empty space and glass shards where he and his daemon had been standing. 

"I don't know what that was," Nitoh said shakily as he and Asuna canceled their transformations. "But that wasn't a Phantom."

Asuna's stomach twisted into knots as her brain started to catch up to what she'd just seen. _ No, it was something worse.  _

..

Misora sat up in the train. In the darkness just outside of Tolosa, something felt wrong. Her mouth moved, but it wasn't her speaking. It was the other person, the Queen, Vernage. 

_ "He's awoken from his sleep."  _ She said, staring out into the dark of the countryside.  _ "The Tyrant has returned." _


	20. Exploring Oxford

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yakumo) - Murigen (named after the Welsh goddess of lakes and flooding) - a wood sandpiper, female (Tringa glareola)
> 
> For timeline references, this chapter happens a week before Noel and Misora travel to Tolosa.

Oto was amazed by Oxford. The largest of the college buildings were the same size as Ryugu palace in the Sea Ryusoul tribe's main city. The library reminded her of the library in the main city. It had so many interesting books on a lot of interesting subjects like archeology, experimental theology, natural theology, or anbaric engineering. But the most exciting place (according to Ian) was the rooftops. There was a door that led to the roof of the library. 

When neither Kou or Ian were watching, Oto snuck up to the roof. Anup turned into a magpie and chased a couple of pigeons that were roosting on a ledge. She hung around on the roof above a courtyard and eavesdropped on a couple of scholars. 

"I wish I had the time to explore the tunnels under here. I've heard they have a lot of interesting stuff." One said. 

"Yes, I've heard that the old masters of Jordan College had their skulls preserved with memorial coins in a crypt down there." The other added. 

Oto exchanged glances with her daemon. They were going to find that crypt. She climbed down and Anup changed into a fox. He sniffed along the ground until they found an entrance into the tunnels. Following her daemon down into the dark depths, Oto was surprised. It wasn't as cold and dark as the deep sea, but it was cramped and musty smelling. Her vision took a minute to adjust to the darkness. As she walked through the tunnel, she noticed that it widened a bit the further she walked. 

Oto found herself in a room filled with wooden shelves filled with bottles and barrels stacked against the walls. The musty, sour smell made her gag. "What do you think is in those bottles, Anup?" 

Her daemon tilted his fox head to the side as he sniffed a barrel. "I don't know, Oto. Wine, maybe?" 

Oto had smelled a similar scent once when her brother had gone on a date with a woman who'd later rejected him. She'd ordered some wine and had given it to him before telling him that she wasn't interested in him. Kanaro had come back to the sea cave they'd been staying in later that night, around roughly midnight. He'd smelled like expensive wine and Oto had promised herself she'd never drink. Her brother had ended up sick and had gone to the hospital a couple hours later because he was allergic to the wine he'd been given.

"This is definitely _not_ a crypt." Anup muttered. So, she continued on through the tunnels for several minutes. The tunnels snaked under Jordan College for miles, she found out. She was about to enter another room when someone grabbed her arm. 

Oto shrank back as Kou glared at her. He looked angry, his grip tightening around her wrist. Anup turned into a tawny furred cat with black spots and black feet that was slightly smaller than Sara. The Siamese cat hissed, lashing her cream tabby striped tail angrily. The younger cat crouched under her frustrated glare. Sara flicked an ear in annoyance. 

"Oto, what are you doing? Explain now." He said sternly. 

"I-I was bored and went exploring along the rooftops when I heard about people going down into the tunnels." She stammered. Oto was not a bad liar by any means, she'd lied her way out of situations before, but she knew when lying was useful and when it wasn't. Lying to Kou was probably not a very good idea. She'd once attempted to lie her way out of trouble with Asuna and Melt and had been scolded by the two of them after they'd seen through her bluff immediately. 

Kou turned away toward the nearest exit. "C'mon, Oto," He said. "When we get out of here, you're going to apologize to Ian and Gwen for running off and worrying them." 

Oto pouted as she picked up Anup and followed Kou out of the tunnels. 

The two of them were staying in an inn around a couple miles from Jordan College, an inn which was technically on Jordan land, since a lot of the land around Oxford was owned by Jordan College. 

When Kou went back to Jordan College to talk to Ian, Oto snuck off again. She browsed the books in the library and checked out a book on fairy myths and similar folklore. The legends were similar to tales of Youkai she'd heard landwalkers in Nippon talk about. Creatures that could be either helpful, harmful, or neutral to humans. 

The descriptions of people lying to the Fair Folk amused her. Oto had always admired trickster characters in stories, such as the sea Ryusoul tribe legend about a woman who found out sea witches were stealing fishermens' catches, so she and her frilled shark daemon had gone down into the depths to the sea vents where the Queen of the sea witches (who was also the Queen of the Underworld) lived and had tricked the Queen into making a promise to leave the fishers catches alone in exchange for a magic turtle shell. The magic turtle shell had trapped the sea witch Queen inside and the woman had thrown it into the deepest and hottest ocean vent she could find. After that, the sea witches never bothered the tribe again. 

The stranger things, such as the Fair Folk's theft of children, reminded Oto of another tale Kanaro had told her when she was little that he'd heard from their Grandmother. It was about a leviathan that dwarfed even Mosarex and would steal children wandering alone in the deep sea. The legend about a whale made of bones that foretold the death of a loved one was similar to the Bean Sí in Eireland and Scotland. 

"I see you have an interest in the Tylwyth Teg, lass." Oto looked up from the book to see a man of Nipponese descent with a small brown feathered bird daemon with a thin, curved black beak and white underparts. A sandpiper. His accent sounded Welsh like Ian's but more southern compared to Ian's northern accent.

Anup turned into a suka and hissed. 

"Uh...yeah. I think they're interesting." She replied. 

The man shook hands with her. "I'm Yakumo Katou and this Murigen." He said. 

"I'm Oto and this is Anup."

Yakumo smiled. "Nice to meet you both. I've heard a couple tales myself while I've been studying in Northern Wales. One of them is of this black dog called the Gwyllgi or "dog of darkness" that roams rural roads in Wales looking for lost travellers so she can hunt them. Some say she was someone's daemon that was separated from her human half and she wanders around because she's looking for 'em."

"That's an interesting story." Anup remarked, turning into one of his favored forms, a leatherback sea turtle. "Is there anyone alive who's seen the Fair Folk in the past century or so?" 

The sandpiper daemon laughed. "You'd have to talk to Professor Polstead or the kitchen cook, Alice Parslow. They've claimed to meet fairies before back during the Flood of 1989." 

"Where can I find them?" Oto asked. 

Yakumo and Murigen exchanged nervous looks. "Uh…" Yakumo said. "Last I heard, Ms. Parslow and Professor Polstead were accompanying Ms. Belacqua to an alethiometery conference in Tolosa, France. So, they're not going to be back for another two weeks."

Oto nodded as she put the book back on the shelf. "I'll be going now." She said. "It was nice meeting you." 

"Likewise, Miss Oto." 

Oto caught up with Kou and Ian and told them about what she'd learned. 

Kou frowned. "We're not going to France, Oto." He said. Sara sat up from the table she was lounging on. 

Oto pouted. "But I want to learn about the Fair Folk." She protested. 

"We can do that later," Sara told her. "Right now, we need to focus on finding out where our other teammates are and how to reunite with them."

"Going to France could help us find them." Anup argued. "We could go talk to an alethiometerist at the conference in Tolosa and get them to find out where our friends are." 

Kou did not look like he was willing to entertain her idea. "No." 

Later that day, Oto had taken a couple travel atlases from the library and started mapping out a route from Oxford to Tolosa. The port near Weymouth was going to be her starting point. Calling on Mosarex and how fast he'd arrive in the English Channel was the only issue. She would probably need to convince him to swim her across. Oto was perfectly capable of swimming across the English Channel herself, she just didn't want to do so unless she had no other option. 

Then, there was the problem of getting to Tolosa as soon as she got out of the water. Perhaps she could sneak aboard a zeppelin? 

Oto returned the books and started her journey to Weymouth by swimming through the river down to the port. By landwalker standards, Oto was a fast swimmer. She made it to Weymouth in less than three hours. 

Once she reached Weymouth, she was confronted by Kou. He'd followed her the entire way there. "Oto," He said angrily. "What do you think you're doing?" 

Oto glared at him as Anup turned into a saltwater crocodile. Sara unsheathed her claws and arched her back, her tail puffed up and ears flattened to her head as she hissed and growled at them. 

"I'm trying to help get the others back quicker." Oto snapped. 

"I don't want you getting lost or hurt, Oto." Kou snapped back. "We're in a place we know nothing about and the first thing you do is run off. How is that helpful if you don't even know where you're going?" 

Oto ran at him. Instead of crashing into him, she circled past him and jumped into the water. She was going to find Malcolm and Alice. She was going to Tolosa. She would find the rest of her team in her own way, and no one, not even Kou, could stop her. 


	21. Meeting Oto

_ Lyra woke up to the smell of eggs and toast in her dorm.  _ **_That's odd._ ** _ She thought. She hadn't asked anyone to cook for her last night and Alice and Malcolm were both in Tolosa for a theology meeting for the next two weeks.  _

_ Still somewhat sleepy, she climbed out of bed, Pantalaimon uncurling himself from her side and hopping onto the floor as she got dressed. When she went into the small kitchen/dining room, she stopped.  _

_ "Bonjour, mon belette."  _

_ Lyra stared at the man sitting at the table in her dorm. His Scottish wildcat daemon, Marie, was lying on the table on her back, head turned upside down to stare at her and Pantalaimon. He was wearing a freshly ironed white button down shirt and black pants with dress shoes. His dark brown hair was neatly combed back and his eyes shone teasingly. He had a plate of eggs and a croque madame sandwich in front of him and another plate as well.  _

_ "Arsène? What are you doing here?" She asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down. Pantalaimon climbed onto the tabletop and sniffed Marie.  _

_ "I just wanted to see how you were doing." The phantom thief smiled.  _

_ Lyra grabbed a fork and started eating a fried egg. She knew Arsène's tricks as well as anyone did. He wanted to ask her something. "What do you want? Is it important?" She chewed and swallowed, savoring the firm yet liquidy texture of the egg.  _

_ Marie purred. "Yes, my silver tongued kitten."  _

_ That was a nickname the Witch-man's daemon reserved for people that both her and Arsène cared about and saw as close friends or family, which was a very rare thing. Like the form his daemon had settled in, Arsène was not much of a people person and preferred to be alone when he wasn't playing tricks on those he stole from.  _

_ Arsène got up and put his plate, fork, and knife in the kitchen sink. When he sat back down, he placed two journals and a wooden box on the table.  _

_ Lyra recognized it immediately. It was the kind of box that the alethiometer in the Oxford library was kept in. She'd heard Malcolm and Alice mention that Arsène had stolen an alethiometer from Muscovy many years ago.  _

_ He pushed them toward her. "I need you to keep these safe for me, Lyra. I'm afraid of them falling into the wrong hands."  _

_ "Like the Ganglers?" Pantalaimon said.  _

_ Marie nodded, ears flattening. "Oui." _

_ Lyra grinned. "Of course I'll take them for you, Arsène." She picked up the box and the journals and opened the hidden bottom of her wooden desk. She placed them in gently and closed it.  _

_ "Merci, Lyra." He thanked her. "If they're around at the moment, tell Malcolm and Alice I said hello."  _

_ Lyra and Pantalaimon watched as he left, disappearing as quickly as a mirage in a desert.  _

..

Noel woke up the next morning to see that he had several missed texts from Keiichiro, Sakuya, and Tsukasa. Vered yawned and took the form of a european polecat as she climbed up his back and draped herself across his shoulders so she could read as well. The texts started out apologizing to him, Misora, and Banjou for believing that they were spies or not human. The rest of the texts were about how they’d talked to Marin and the information they’d learned about where the Ganglers held frozen people. 

Noel exited his texts and put up his phone in his bag. He’d checked into a hotel late at night, shortly after he’d entered Tolosa. It was a decent hotel. Early morning sunshine shone in through the curtains of the window. 

Misora and Emyr were still asleep, the two of them curled up in a mass of messy sheets and blankets. “Hey, Misora,” He said, lightly shaking her. “Get up. We need to get going so we can get to the convention.” 

Misora rolled over and mumbled something rude. 

“Misora, the lobby downstairs has free breakfast.” 

She sat up and Emyr yawned. They got out of bed as Noel went to the bathroom to take a shower and get dressed. Misora was dressed by the time he finished and the two of them went down to the dining room in the lobby and had breakfast. Noel had a pain au chocolat, a croissant spread with butter, and eggs. Misora had two pain au chocolats, ham, and three croissants with pear jam. 

“Look over there near the window, Nöe.” Vered murmured. She was sitting in his lap in the form of a polecat. Sitting alone at a table close to a window was a young girl, no older than 11 or 12 years old. Her daemon was in the form of a river otter. She was wearing a pale blue dress and a yellow vest. The girl looked to be of East Asian descent. There was nothing strange about her, but Noel couldn’t keep his eyes off her. The girl had been down in the lobby for 30 minutes but no one had joined her. 

Noel got up and slipped into one of the chairs across from her. The girl and her daemon looked up as Noel and Vered sat down. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle, comment vas-tu? Comment est-ce que vous appelez?” He asked in French. The girl looked confused, so he spoke in Occitan instead. “Adishatz. Cossí vos dison? Quin te va, Domaisella?” Seeing that she was still confused, he switched to Japanese. “Hello, how are you doing, miss? What’s your name?”

“Oto. My daemon is Anup.” She answered. 

“I’m Noel Takao and my daemon is called Vered.” He offered her a croissant which she took and ate. Misora came over and introduced herself. 

“If you don’t mind me asking, mademoiselle, why are you sitting alone? Are the people you’re travelling with upstairs?” Misora asked. 

Oto looked uncomfortable. Anup turned into a bright red crab and scuttled into her lap. Her daemon turned into a large blackish-green scaled torpedo shaped fish with red markings before turning into a gharial. “No, I’m travelling alone.” She admitted. 

Emyr sniffed Anup. “Why?” He asked. 

Anup answered. "Can we go somewhere else and talk there instead?" 

"Of course you can." Vered replied. 

“You can come with us to our hotel room for a bit." Misora told her.


	22. Goodbyes

Kairi was scouting the area for any sign of Banjou when the man appeared. He'd been perching on the edge of a rooftop as the sun rose above the horizon. Aoi had spotted him first. "Kairi, look to your left, down on the ground." He looked and saw a middle aged man of East Asian descent wearing a brown vest and black pants with a white shirt underneath. His daemon was a black bird with a yellow belly and long black tail feathers. 

Kairi jumped down. The man turned, surprised. 

"Mind telling me what you're doing here?" Kairi said, straightening up and taking a couple steps towards the man. 

The man frowned. "I was going to deliver something to the Inamori girl, but it seems she isn't here." It was then that Kairi noticed the package tied to the man's belt by a thick string. 

"I know the girl you're talking about. I can deliver it to her myself, if that'll be okay with you, sir." Kairi said. 

The man looked uncertain, but his daemon was stoic. He nodded. "Alright." He grabbed a small pocket knife and cut the string off his belt before handing the package to Kairi. As he left, he heard a soft  _ clink  _ noise like metal hitting stone and looked up to see Aoi holding the man's pocket watch in her beak. 

He sighed. "Aoi, stop." 

Aoi cawed. "But it was shiny." 

Kairi shook his head. He walked back to the antique shop and went inside. Asuna and Nitoh had already informed Haruto of what happened last night. He handed the package to Haruto and sat down on the couch. 

Haruto unwrapped the package. Inside was a belt, much like the one Haruto had. It was an ordinary brown leather belt with a steel buckle. Alya grabbed it in her mouth and set it down in front of Aoi. 

"So, the man said it was for Mayu, right?" Alya asked. 

Aoi nodded, bobbing her head up and down. "Yes." 

Otso snorted and sniffed the belt. "Mayu already has a Wizardriver. I think he was delivering this to someone else." 

Kairi smirked and put it on. "It's mine now." The belt turned into a driver. 

Haruto rushed over to Wajima's workshop and came back a couple minutes later with several rings. He put them on the table. "Here. You're going to need rings if you want to use the belt." 

"Shiny…" Aoi crooned, hopping over to the pile of rings and picking up a ring with her beak. Kairi petted the feathers around her neck. "Aoi…" He said. 

He took several rings and put them in his pockets. "Thanks muchly." He said to Haruto. 

Asuna stood up from the chair she'd been sitting in and started looking through the rings. "Can any of these teleport people somewhere else?" She put her plate of bacon wrapped sausage with cheese down next to her on the table. 

"Yeah," Koyomi said, joining her. "The teleport ring." She handed Kairi a blue ring with a vortex on it, a red ring with a wizard on it, and a yellow ring with a dragon wearing a bowtie on it. 

"Why do you want to know about the teleport ring, Asuna?" Najm asked. 

Asuna froze. "Me and my friends were frozen in ice and teleported to different places. I was thinking, maybe, I could use the teleport ring to join one of them and we could find the rest of my friends." She answered. Bianca bristled and started growling. 

Miki exchanged a panicked glance with Shori.  _ Frozen in ice… _ "You encountered him, too?" He said. 

Kairi froze. "Zamigo Delma." 

Asuna stared at the two of them suspiciously before she took the teleport ring from Kairi. “We need to go now.” 

Kairi put the Wizardriver on. Haruto told him how to activate it and use the rings. 

**_Driver, on! Teleport, please._ ** Asuna, Shori, and Kairi said goodbye before walking into the portal. 


End file.
